Rotting Lawn Refuse vs. Me. I win. Barely.

You might recall my post about cleaning up our garden that I wrote a few weeks ago. Well, the lawn refuse I collected filled three gigantic paper bags (the kind you buy especially for yard waste). We hauled them into the garage, propped them up against a wall, and waited for the next trash pick up. Unfortunately, last Friday, when the bags of waste should have been moved curbside, it rained. I wasn't about to bring the paper bags to the curb and let them soak up water all morning. We left them in the garage.

And boy, did we pay for it.

Interesting things happen to yard waste after it has been in your garage for several weeks:

• It produces a stench so powerful that when the door from the garage to the house is opened, the smell wafts through the entire house and lingers for several minutes.

• It melts into chocolate colored goopy liquid.

• It creates a fuzzy white mold. On the rotting vines and on the outside of the bag.

• It oozes. Slowly. Out of the bag and all over the floor.
  

Now, I should note that only one bag was really responsible for all of the ickiness. I swear that the material in the bag had lost about 75% of its total volume over the last two weeks. It just collapsed into a rotting pile of slimy brown stuff.

Unfortunately for me, while I was very aware of the smell I didn't realize just how bad the problem was until this morning when I brought the garbage out to the curb. This was, of course, after G left for work so I was left to fend for myself.

Freshly showered and dressed for the day, I assessed the situation and realized very quickly that the leaking bag wasn't going make it to the curb in one piece. I also realized that I really didn't want to touch the slimy, moldy mess. I had no choice, though, it absolutely had to be thrown out today. I somehow managed to pick up the oozing blob while using two plastic garbage bags as giant mitts to try to contain everything that was trying to escape from it.

Wrestling with rotting waste is not a great way to start your Friday.

You know what's really bad, though? I managed to stuff another giant bag into our trash bin, but I couldn't fit the third one in. I left it in the garage. I just can't justify paying our waste company extra money to remove it. I think this is a good example of a time when my mom would tell me that I'm too cheap.

Have a happy Friday!