Changing plans

Today I completed all my written goals, but not quite all my mentally recorded ones. For the last week or so I have been getting up early and/or staying out late trying to clear some of the huge number of overgrown weeds in my main vegetable garden - and discovering a few things like tomatoes, cucumbers and okra that have somehow survived among the weeds - as well as plenty of self-sown butternut pumpkins. Today was my first chance to spend the entire morning in garden without worrying about what the children were doing etc. and so I got my plasters on all my blisters (it hasn't rained for weeks and the hard ground doesn't make for easy weed pulling!), got my work clothes on and was outside by 8:30am and determined to work till 12pm. Unfortunately my big plans were changed rapidly when about 9:30am I discovered an unwanted friend under some of the big weeds. This friend is called a "mamushi" and is a poisonous snake - for which the anti-venom apparently only works the first time you are bitten. I have seen one before so knew exactly what it was, but it looked dead to me as it had a few flies buzzing on it and was curled up not moving at all. I had the camera with me so snapped a photo then went to get my big spade to "dispose" of it.... only to discover that it had disappeared when I got back. And that was the end of my gardening for the day and some bonus "me time"!
I told my mother-in-law about it and she banned me from the garden and told me that the mamushi never move when they see people (unless they feel like pouncing of course!). She then got on to my father-in-law who cut down the rest of the weeds for me and also managed to find the mamushi again and cut it up with the weed eater. He was very impressed that I could recognise one - not something that I really want to do again in the near future though... perhaps it is a very good incentive to keep the weeds at a manageable level!