WANTED: Chainsaw for Killer Plants

Got home when it was still light out and the husband was mowing the front yard so I decided to put my brand new dragonfly gardening gloves to good use and get out there too. I began by trimming some very big palms and then I went for the big plant bed full of palms and pine trees. It was like visiting the jungle. Not sure if anyone's been in this area ever. I pulled, grabbed, cut and cleared about five large black garbage bags full of limbs, pine needles, dead palms and a few items of trash. I was feeling pretty good about myself until...



The Spanish Bayonet...This thing is vicious! I noticed that the leaves at the bottom of the base were dying so I went in to strip them away from the trunk and unknowingly, OUCH! I got sliced. Just to make sure I wasn't imagining it all, I went in again and tried to grab another dead leaf and OUCH! Sliced again. I decided to back away from the little stabber of a plant and walk over to my Mr. Wonderful and as calmly as possible ask him, as blood is streaming down my arm,

"Honey...WHERE THE HECK IS THE CHAINSAW?"

He laughed and said, "You're not chopping that Spanish Bayonet down. What happened to your arm?"

I said, "Is that what that is? Hmmm..."

"Yea, did you touch it?...It's very sharp and dangerous. Are you okay? Do you need to go inside and put a bandage on that cut?"

"No, no (nervous laugh)...I'm fine. I didn't really notice that it was sharp."

I then repeated in what I thought was a stern tone, "Where's the chainsaw?"

He then reinforced his earlier response by saying, "You're not going to get rid of that palm tree. They're pretty."

I then began explaining to him (while bleeding) that we can't even maintain the stabbing foliage so to me it's ugly and unsafe and needs to go immediately. He seemed to believe that nature will take its course and things will remain nice without much blood loss from either one of us.

So after this episode, I went online. I did some digging (ba-dum bump) and I came across the following comment about the savage dagger:

This plant is impossible to get rid of once its in the ground. We moved into a new house and inherited about 30 of these. I have tried digging them out, poisoning them, nothing works. If a tiny shred of root remains, it will sprout a new plant. This is the bane of my yard!

Great! Just great!! I think we have three of them all in one corner of our yard. I guess it could be worse...We could have 30 like the person above but even three seems to be too many.

Anyway, I learned a lot the other day when working with plants:

1 - Get better gloves...The kind that goes up to your arm sockets so you won't get sliced. I love the green Dragonfly gloves but they're more for show. BTW, Mr. Wonderful did point this out to me when I bought them.
2 - Don't try to trim or prune anything you haven't been formally introduced to either by your husband or by online research.
3 - Have a chainsaw handy so that no one can argue with you about your impulsive behavior. It's not wise to mess with a woman and her chainsaw.
4 - If you haven't helped in the yard and only been maintaining the inside of the house, don't come home and get ambitious. You're doing just fine making sure the laundry is done and the floor is vacuumed.