And together we learn

Been served

Why is it that some things are ever so much easier in theory than they actually turn out to be? Why is it that I thought that keeping up with the miles and miles and miles of flower beds around my home would be a piece of cake? Cause I sure did, at one point. Not so much anymore, but there was definitely a time I thought this wasn't a laughable prospect.

The children I have, while excellent for some purposes, really are terrible when it comes to major weeding. Crazy, right? I totally thought they'd be able to assist me in this not-so-hard job. In retrospect it's all perfectly clear--the madness. But at some point this all made sense.

So the yard got away from me in a big way last year. And this year when I went out to attempt to tame it, it wasn't pretty. The field that is my backyard turned into flowerbeds of field, and they don't lend themselves beautifully to hand weeding. Heavy machinery, maybe, but that's not really an option.

So after many many hours of trying to make my yard a presentable place, I realized this was a job far beyond me. I called in help, in the form of two little 11 yr old neighbor girls. They worked diligently for hours and made a tiny dent.

The next morning I got a call from my neighbor. She told me she does a once monthly family home evening for a group of youth, and could she please bring 25 kids over to weed my yard and clean my toilets?

First reaction: shame, embarrassment, mortification, and guilt.

Second reaction: flooded with relief and gratitude.

Third reaction: gotta clean my entire house and the yard to get it ready for people to come over! Crappy!

Last night we went from oceans of beds looking like this:



To oceans of flower beds getting shown who was boss:



My darling sister contributed beautiful cheesecake pops left over from a wedding she catered. I made sure to tell them all the origin of the fancy schmancy treats. Cause going to someone's house to do service when you think they've been spending their time supposedly dipping chocolates and putting pretty pink chocolate flowers on each one of them instead of doing their own darn weeding? That's just a bit awkward. With the provenance of the goodies accounted for, everyone felt happy.



Still a bit chagrined that I'm a project, but oh, so very grateful that this Sisyphean task is now under control!!

posted by Becca at 9:22 PM