Why in the world would this single incident change your mind about hiring a landscaper?? A serial killer can masquerade under any profession! The chances of another landscaper being a serial killer are remote to nonexistent.

There have been at least 26 doctors that have been serial killers......so based on the same logic, would you never visit a doctor again??

So disturbing.

Gardengal, I cannot speak for Dawn, but like her, I do all my own gardening and I can only dream of accomplishing what she and her husband do and learning just a portion of her knowledge about gardening in our fickle and often unforgiving climate.

I envy her intelligence, resilience, and empathy with those of us who don't possess her experience and savvy. I avidly read her plans to update her garden in ways that will accommodate her needs in her retirement years (though I suspect she will still run circles around those 20 years her junior!)

For me, and I suspect for her, self-reliance is a crucial part of being an Oklahoma gardener. If I had to hire someone to help me garden or landscape, there would be no joy if I couldn't get my hands dirty. Shoot, I don't even entrust my husband with my beloved gardening tasks!

So, if I ever remotely ponder the idea of hiring someone, I'd have to follow along, supervise, and re-do at least part of that person's work. I'd be horrified if that person didn't amend the soil correctly, planted carelessly, or pulled up some of my choices thinking they were worthless.

So, yeah, the thought of sticking a shovel in the ground or my hand into a pot and making that gruesome discovery would repulse me enough to strengthen my resolve to never hire someone to do work for me in my garden...unless they came to me with the strictest of recommendations and I could watch their every move.....Nah, probably not even then, lol.

Oh, and the doctor analogy? I figure the odds percentage-wise are in my favor, but I do my due diligence in researching their records and tend to get recommendations. In fact, I worry more about negligence than homicidal tendencies. I changed my primary care doctor when he missed a cancer diagnosis on an acquaintance. I'm more likely to die driving on the road than at a doctor's hands. That doesn't stop me from driving (at least until I'm not capable) because I have to get to work and do errands. The key here is going to the doctor and driving are necessities, but gardening is what I like to do...a lot, lol! Oh, and doctors and bad drivers aren't invited to my house, at least not to practice medicine or bad habits.

Carol

Interesting. So did the people not find the bodies in their planters?!

"Hey mom! There's an arm sticking out of my flowers!!"

"Okay Honey, let it go. It's not like it's a dead BODY or anything!"

Seriously though, that's disgusting.

Jack, as disgusting as it is, this DOES make me curious as to how well the plants were doing.

Gardengal, I have seen how the rest of gw works and that is not how we do life over here in the OK corner. Here we do not accuse attack or question anyone's opinion at all, ever. Everyone is entitled to speak and if we don't agree it's okay. Our unspoken rule is if you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything.

Thanks for visiting

Kim

As an avid watcher of CSI shows, they (at least on TV) often fly over an area when searching for a body and look for greener ground than the surrounding area. I am reminded of our renters complaining there were cat sculls in the flower garden. They discovered the pet graveyard. But seriously, wouldn't you wonder what kind of nasty smelling compost was in that pot?

Oh my gosh... just this morning we laughed again at Judy... a cycling friend and her words.

As most of you know, I am a cycling fanatic. I belong to a group that hosts other cyclists as they bike around the world/country. I had a fellow named Dale stay with me, and he stayed for a second night. We planned to ride to the Sunday morning ride... and partake with refreshments at the local coffee shop. Well, Dale had a flat. It took him a while to get it fixed. We ended up taking the car to the coffee shop. I introduced him all around.

Judy said: So, Dale, you saw Moni's yard?

Dale: yes

Judy: saw all those flowers?

Dale: yes

Judy: You know there are bodies under there!!!

LOL, you should have heard all the laughter... but honest, Dale is one of the few I have never heard from again.... and now, the rest of the story:

Thursday Asplundh was next door. Once they turned the chipper off, I went out and asked if they could dump their load on my drive way.

Well, as you can see from the picture they did. Yesterday evening Bill send me a text and asked if I was coming for the breakfast this morning (to cold, we don't ride, but drive someplace for breakfast). I told Bill, I couldn't get out of the garage.... and sent him the above picture. LOL

I asked him if he could pick me up. Texts:

Bill: are you hiding skulls?

Moni: Bodies, Bill, Bodies!

Bill: I told you to use your neighbors yards for burial

then he called. Such a HUGE amount of laughter again.

Bill did pick me up, cause I still can't get out of the garage. I hope to get that pile all moved by sometime Monday... at the present it is only half as big as in the picture.

Moni

Jacob and Jack, you're killin' me! They really need a laugh button. Good description of Dawn and how she is, Carol.

Moni

You are a mess. If they ever pick u up for questioning your sense of humor tell them to call me lol. I will vouch "it's a German thing" don't ask

Oh and moni next time tell them don't worry its only the ones that forget to put seat and lid down

LOL, Moni, you had me cracking up. Nancy, I teach middle schoolers and I frequently am heard saying, "Bless their hearts!" followed by a nefarious chuckle.

ETA: I was quite sincere about Dawn.

Hysterical, Moni!! Yep, Sandplum, I can only imagine. I substituted frequently for sixth grade in a small rural community. I was the only one who would! LOL I loved the sixth-graders!

gardengal, I was just making a joke! The people here on this forum who know me would understand that.

Carol, I think finding a buried body part would be something that would be hard to recover from. I'm not saying it would drive me out of gardening, but it sure would be a hard memory to dispose of. I hope you're doing well, and I don't trust my husband with garden chores. He is absolutely banned from the garden with any motorized tool like a chainsaw because he'll somehow manage to find and cut down 'accidentally' the most precious plant I have. He and the garden are both happier if he never steps foot into it. So, I garden, he mows the acres. You know how it goes, and we both are happy. I don't live in an area where people hire landscapers anyhow, and you know I do it all myself here. I live in a grassland where it is an accomplishment if you manage to have neighbors who mow down the tall grasses a time or two a year. (Wildfires do encourage everyone to get started on that mowing sooner or later.)

LoneJack, Well, I hadn't thought of it that way. I still think I'd rather buy blood meal and bone meal. Of course, I'm married to a cop and he wouldn't tolerate having a serial killer for a wife anyhow (thought there's bad guys in the police profession too, as in any other, but he's not one of those bad cops), even if it meant an endless supply of blood meal and bone meal.

Jacob, Perhaps now everyone knows that particular landscaper's secret for growing bountiful plants. Do you think? I don't think I want to know how long it takes for those particular items to break down into components that plants can take up and use.

Seriously, though, the whole thought of this grosses me out. And, you know, being very rural, every now and then we stumble upon old bones that once belonged to something....hopefully that something was a non-human type of animal, and I'm not really overjoyed when that happens, even if it is just the bones of a possum. I always feel like we've disturbed a sleeping spirit.

Kim, Thank you. Truly. I am sure she meant no harm. She just didn't know how much we joke and banter back and forth here. I was just trying to brighten up everybody's gray gloomy winter day with a little humorous comment about some grotesque news I'd been following on TV the last couple of days.

Amy, I had wondered about the smelly part of the equation myself. Perhaps it would depend on the time of the year. Maybe in parts of the country that are colder than us, consistently, in winter, you might not get that decomposing smell. I know I seldom smell roadkill type odors while walking the dogs down our country roads in winter, but smell them at other times of the year. Usually it is just possums, armadillos, coons or rabbits, but occasionally something larger....and I have to divert and use a different walking route until the worst of the smell is gone. Or, if we're lucky, the vultures clean it right up and the smell is gone in no time. I tell you, when we dreamed of moving to the country and living in the middle of nowhere, it wasn't stinky dead roadkill we were thinking about, but there's plenty of that out here.

Moni, That's hysterical about Dale. I'm 99.99% sure he doesn't really think there are dead bodies underneath your beautiful flowers.

Nice score on the wood chips. We can't get those out here. The guys generally just leave the chips where they fall when they are cutting along our rural roads and no one complains. Life is just different out here in the sticks (deliberate word choice!).

Y'all know, after a couple of months (less for some, but we could substitute four months for others) without rain, I'm thinking the dryness would make things decompose very slowly here at the present time. We need rain or even the DIY landscapers aren't going to be happy.

Dawn

I don't know Dawn that pear tree Moni had was huge for its age. Obviously she had some kind of secret.

You know my garden in q was an old slaughterhouse. The leftovers were dumped in one section and tilled in. They used to say manure but I talked to the guy that dumped the parts buckets. Lovely soil

Well, Moni needs to keep that secret to herself. If she's buying bodies under fruit trees, I do not want to know that. lol.

As for your slaughterhouse soil, I always figured it had been a dumping ground for parts....and that you were lucky to have it. People don't like the thought of that, but animals parts decompose into usable nutrients too. However, that still doesn't mean I'd use any animal parts in my compost pile---not on purpose. A cat might drop a dead mouse or bird on there occasionally or whatever and I probably wouldn't notice because I just dump stuff on top of the pile and don't turn it very often. There's some things you just don't want to think about...but sometimes I'll find a snake skin on top of the compost pile and wonder if the snake itself has burrowed into the pile, which is one argument against turning the pile that day as far as I am concerned.

I try to imagine what it would be like to have a safe compost pile in a city where I wouldn't see many or any snakes, toads, frogs, moles, voles, gophers, baby bunnies, skinks, skunks, possums, armadillos, lizards or anything else lurking around the pile. It keeps me on my toes. I don't mind if any of those critters are around---I just don't want to be stepping on them while trying to turn the pile. Nothing should come between a woman and her compost pile.

Kim, I know people are shocked when I say I dump (cooked) meat and bones in my pile, but I do! Everything in my pile composts fine. Nothing bothers my pile, I did have a neighbor cat who would take up residence in my yard and taunt her fellow dog siblings across the fence. It look a year before I finally found out that cat had been mooching off every neighbor, pretending to be homeless, but had a home right behind me!

Is not something i advertised at the market lol. Most people are weird about it. And even weirder when they found out I lived on slaughter house property. Muwahaha

LOL