Has anyone ever heard of an instance where humans were able to successfully combine children and yardwork? If so, how did they do it? Ruby, Ari, Freestone, Xanthe, Esmae, Ptolemy and I worked for three hours pulling weeds on Saturday and got roughly 20 minutes worth of work done. The whole endeavor ended up being about "winning" for Xanthe and Esmae and math skills for Freestone. For the older girls, it was about perfecting their fear of spiders and bugs. Every 30 seconds, Esmae and Xanthe would ask if they were winning, Ruby would scream and point at an invisible insect, and Ari would go to Coco's to "get a rake." Every time I asked Freestone to do something, he would say, "How many points would I get?" He and I definitely expended more energy tallying imaginary points than pulling weeds. In the end, Freestone had one million points, the preschoolers were deemed the "best workers," Ruby never came back from returning all of Coco and Bill's tools and Ari took Tolly on a long walk. Scott and Golda came back from flute just in time to see me filling the last garbage bag with weeds. I was indignant that they had been gone so long until I found out they had been Mothers' Day shopping. OK, that's valid.
I came to the sad conclusion that having a beautiful yard is just more work than I want it to be. Hopefully, practice will make perfect over the season. If I don't end up with a beautiful yard, at least I'll end up with kids who can make up excuses to get out of working.
2 comments:
Oh man, I remeber those LONG days of working in the yard as a kid. Boy did I HATE it. Now, I would consider it one of my hobbies. That is IF I had time.
My advise... HIRE someone to get it ready then maintain it.
Oh, I like that last comment! Then go out and buy a pre-emmergant like Preen and sprinke it everywhere. Seriously it has changeded my gardening world. Stops weed seeds from germinating. How long until Wednesday?
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