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Anyway, today I spent my wonderfully warm and sunny Saturday doing yard work. To many, this may seem like a trial...something you're forced to do, but quirky as I am, I really enjoy it. Of course, I didn't always like it. When I was growing up, my mother had extensive gardens in both the front and back yard, and since Mom obviously didn't believe in child labor laws, Stepher and I were expected to help her weed and plant and mulch them. Bright and early every summer, Mom would get us up and outside to work in the flowerbeds. It was hot, it was dirty, and if we strained our necks at just the right angle to see over the mountains of mulch that needed to be spread, we could just make out the other neighborhood kids playing on their slip-n-slide or riding their bikes or just leisurely whiling their summers away. Oh how we grumbled and fussed and complained and swore that when we had yards of our own, there wouldn't be a single flowerbed to be seen. "All grass", I'd say. "As far as the eye can see...just grass. No weeding, no mulching, no planting. Maybe not even grass...maybe I can get AstroTurf". And Steph would solemnly not her head and we would sigh and go back to weeding. We figured that Mom was just making us earn our keep. The going rate for enduring our births seemed to be 18 summers of free manual labor. But what I couldn't ever understand would be at the end of the day, when our backs were sore, and our faces covered with sweat and dirt, and Mom would stand up and survey everything the three of us had accomplished and say, "That was fun". And she meant it too, which just proved that Mom was indeed crazy.
Fast forward a decade and a half, and I have a yard of my own. And one day, I was lording over my own little plot of mortgaged earth when I thought to myself, "Some impatiens would really look nice here". Shocking? Yes. But suddenly I realized where Mom was heading with all of that mandatory family yard work. She probably could have just done the yard work herself, or hired a landscaper, but she wanted to teach us the joy of planting something and watching it grow. And somewhere along the way, through all the mulching and the weeding and the planting, I did start to enjoy watching the landscape come alive. So today, after hours of happily planting and mulching and weeding, and becoming completely filthy with sweat and dirt, I noticed that my first irises of the season had bloomed, and I thought to myself, "You're right Mom...That was fun".
Photos: My first two irises of the season. They're my favorite flowers, and also just happen to be the state flower of Tennessee.
1 comment:
You've been drinking the koolaid. I still kill all plants out of unresolved anger issues about weeding during the neighborhood football games. Your flowers are very pretty, but when I saw them I couldn't help grumbling, "what are YOU looking at...?"
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