Toxic co-workers and the Curse of the Spurge!

I’ll keep it brief.

I work for a government agency: have worked for said agency for over thirty years. For the most part of that career, the work environment had been relaxed and respectful.  At times it was even fun.  

The less said about  the change in my work environment the better.  Some people, for whatever reason—mostly having to do with what brought joy to their black, shriveled hearts, got unpleasant  and insulting . The level of condescension was intolerable and the quality of my work was sneered at and belittled.   Snarky emails became an everyday assault on my serenity.

Smiling at denigration was never my strong suit, and I refused to play along.  When, at my next performance evaluation, I was tut-tutted (mildly) about my lack of promptness, I chose to inform my supervisor that I was no longer going to play nice with these people.  That elicited from him a long litany of the contractors who had quit over  their own wonderful treatment at the hands of my detractors.  The list was long and our staff was short. I was begged to be patient and make the best of the situation.

So I did.  I decided upon a backyard makeover.  It was early Spring 2006, the perfect time to begin such a project. I began looking  at gardening websites and magazines.  I began to dream.

I was desperate to feel happy again.  As my poor spouse can attest, I was snarling and bristling at every domestic slight.  I started messing around with PowerPoint, which was the only semi-drawing program I had access to. 

 I found an old empty GSA-issue ledger book and began writing of my frustration and composing crude sketches of the backyard (the “BY”) and embryonic stabs at re-tooling  its aspect and appearance.

The blank book was, to be honest, not exactly empty.  It contained a rather earnest paragraph some one composed many years previous detailing a disturbing dream they’d had.  I wish I had saved the page, but I wanted the new journal to be mine, and mine alone.  I did remember enough to write about it later.  I embellished, of course, but at the time I was not only planning the new landscape but banishing demons as well

 

Next:  The Seven Stations of the Cross (and maybe I’ll get to the Spurge)

Founding the Tilth

My house is a typical ranch-style from 1962.  It is located in a part of the city called South College Heights.  The streets within a 5 block radius are all named after colleges and universities.  There is a Princeton, Yale and Harvard.  There is a Columbia, Loyola and Vassar.  There is a Dartmouth, Tulane, and Duke.  And there is my street, Baylor.  It is about a block long—however “blocks” are measured-- and is located just north of a very busy avenue. 

It’s not a constant hum and zoom and clatter, but it can get noisy.  Once rush hour traffic is over, the evening and nights are, if not placid, then intermittently so.   

The house seemed a castle to me, after having spent several years renting a small bungalow in the old part of town. 

1200 square feet main level, 1200 square feet basement level.  And the basement was finished, with full bath, TV room, rec room, large laundry room, and not up-to-code bedroom.  There are three bedrooms upstairs with a very nice kitchen to cook in, and a passably comfortable living room.  

It was a very nice environment in which to finish raising my two youngest sons--close to school and shopping, and within a mile of my workplace.  The yards, front and back, are not expansive, but the previous owner had made interesting plantings of shrubs and trees.  The backyard had a garden set up with a drip-system for watering.  I began the usual weekend warrior approach to the yard, doing vegetables in the garden, mowing the large green postage stamp expanses of grass, and ignoring the clutter in the two small side yards, East and West.

My “gardening” could have proceeded along thusly, in Biedermeier fashion, happily, if not smugly, prosaic. 

What turned me into a much more seriously-involved landscaper, rather than just a disengaged gardener can be summed up in simple, brutal fashion: My job environment began to suck. 

2006.  The year that contained both the dawn of hope and the utter ends of despair. 

Next: Toxic co-workers and the Curse of the Spurge!