So, a little over a year ago, I decided to go back to school, and while this has been a somewhat resounding success- if I do say so myself- I have noticed some slippage in other areas. For example, I seem to have gained the freshmen, well, ten in my case. I've tried to convince myself that this has nothing to do with seducing myself into a non-stressed haze by scrolling for hours through facebook and cafemom. No. That couldn't be it.
Then, because I went straight through last summer- full time with four children at home-more scrolling-as-stress reliever in my front room office, and there were moments- many moments- where I would look through the windows that line this room and shudder at what had become of my yard. Little creepy tendrils of stress would creep up the back of my neck, forcing my gaze back onto the comparative neatness of the computer screen. Ignore it. It isn't happening. There isn't a rainforest where a neat garden used to be, and wild marijuana is not growing profusely in the back alley. Not happening.
Another issue with last summer was the lawn mower. Yeah. I have issues with lawnmowers. They either don't start for a mechanical problem- or I just can't start them. One or the other, and both rendering the thing useless to its owner. Being in school full time did not seem conducive to using the little rotary mower (that I love, by the way), so I hired out the job, and spent 20 minutes every Thursday just waiting for the lawnmower man to run over some pile of concrete block, hidden under the savannah grass in the back yard and ruin his mower, believing fully that mowers aren't destined to live long in this little corner of the universe. Then there was the fact that the summer before had been the summer of "the storm", which will remain "the storm" until one can come along to top it. It was one of those storms that didn't do enough damage to get any insurance money out of it that we could use on the yard. All up to us. We little people vs. entire trees. Thankfully there are enough people with tractors here, that if we could just get it to the street, they'd chain it and drag it to "the pile".
So, we were recovering from "the storm", I was in school full time, the lawnmower didn't work, and yeah. Bad, bad things happened to our yard. If you decided to walk to the garage via the neat little sidewalk that runs between it and the house, you needed something to cut things down with. Shameful.
And so, this summer, I decided to take off school, opting instead for the restoration of sanity.
This morning, I drug my four children out the door- okay, they actually wanted to go out.. at first. I hung out some laundry on the line, and asked the older two boys to cut strips of landscaping fabric for the garden. This could have gone better. Instead of folding the fabric to make neat, straight lines, they allowed it to billow around, while yelling at each other for help. Guess who cut the fabric? Next, we decided to take down the poppies, which are done blooming for the year, and the little boys were actually quite helpful, taking wheelbarrow loads to the compost pile. We got about 2/3 of this done, when I decided to finish cutting the grass in the area I had suggested be mowed today. I had to do this, because the older boys had decided it was just "too hard". Hear that in as whiny a voice as possible, because that's the way it sounded. I pulled the wash off the line, as it was finally dry and asked the older boys to finish cutting down the poppies while I took the little boys inside for showers and to make lunch. Hearing fighting outside- I stuck my head out the window and said, "Do you want me to fire you two and give your allowances to your little brothers?"
Anyway, it finally got done. Mainly. I'm sure there is detritus to be cleaned up tomorrow. At any rate, the sun is out, the air more dry than before the thunderstorm that came through last night. All in all, a decent day outside.
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