My mother’s patio was a mess. There was clutter everywhere—dead leaves under the table and chairs, bird droppings on the cement flooring, weeds encroaching in the adjacent flowerbed. Mom hadn’t been out there in ages.
Maybe I should clean it up, I thought every so often. But I never got around to it. So I couldn’t explain why, one Sunday, I showed up on her doorstep, unannounced, in my gardening clothes. “Mom, I’m going to do some sprucing up out back,” I said.
“That’s so sweet of you, dear,” she said. Mom yawned and padded toward her bedroom, explaining she was about to take a nap. I watched her shuffle down the hallway. She looks a little frail, I thought.
I grabbed a trowel, a pail and a broom and set to work. First, the garden. I spent a few minutes pulling weeds and grass, clearing away the debris that in some places had almost overwhelmed Mom’s oleanders.
Then picked up the broom and began to sweep the deck. Look at all the dirt and leaves under the lawn chairs, I thought. I thrust the broom beneath the nearest chair. Ouch! I felt a sharp pain just above my left ankle. A spider’s bite? A bee sting? I eyed the ground, then heard an insistent buzzing. Oh my! A swarm of angry wasps circled just above the pile of leaves beneath the chair.
I raced for the house, screaming loud enough to awaken Mom.
“Stay inside,” I cautioned, grabbing a can of wasp spray.
I tiptoed back out to the patio, bent low and peeked at the underside of the chair. There, attached to the plastic fabric, was the largest wasp’s nest I’d ever seen. At least 50 wasps were circling it. I aimed the spray and fired. I kept spraying until I was certain all were dead.
When I returned to the house, Mom was still a little pale.
“Don’t worry. I got them all,” I assured her.
“That whole swarm could have attacked me. I would never have been able to run to the house like you.”
“It’s a good thing you haven’t used the patio in ages,” I reminded her.
“You don’t understand,” Mom said. “I was planning to sweep the patio this very evening, before you showed up.”
