Jul 11, 2016 3 min read

I’ve always been kind of jealous of folks with neatly manicured yards. The kind that have flowing rolls of mulch designed for the mower to go right up to the edge without difficulty. The kind that have beautiful flowers blooming in myriad colors all summer long, with nary a seed pod having been left behind. The kind that cost hundreds – of dollars or hours, your choice – in upkeep.

I haven’t managed to make that happen for us yet. Our hundreds – of dollars AND hours – are spent in the hayfield preparing for winter. What we achieve from June to October is the better part of our livelihood for the full 12 months.

So we always play catch-up with the yard and garden. Many years, we never get the yard all finished at one time. Some gets mowed today, a little more tomorrow. Then the weed-eating gets done, in parts. By the time it’s all caught up, the first section is ready again for the mower.

And the garden? It gets tilled enough to be able to find the edibles growing, but never much more than that. (We actually found our first three cucumbers that day.)

Recently, we had a morning off from the hayfield that wasn’t marked for anything else. I gathered the kids, and they gathered their tools. I rode the riding mower while my son push-mowed banks and trimmed out trees. My oldest used the weed eater where neither mower would go, and the middle one weeded and worked in the garden.

For about two and a half hours, we all worked together to beautify our yard. The girls traded tools halfway through. When I was finished with the rider, I grabbed a garden hoe and cut weeds. My son finished mowing and cleaned up a pile of stuff that was left over from a project.

And you know what happened? We still didn’t get it all done. There is just an incredible amount of yard that gets taken care of here. Not one person slacked in their responsibilities, and we still didn’t get it done. Four people for that length of time equates to 10 hours of yard work, and we were only about halfway finished.

The raspberry patch is still pretty overgrown, and the fencerow is still a bit weedy. The corn didn’t get touched, and the flowers need some attention, but my perspective had shifted. Truly all I saw that day was my kids being the people I had been praying they would grow into.

My kiddos are hard workers. They can work together. They are willing to work for the betterment of their family. They can work with few (if any) complaints. They worked until I told them the job was done. (My oldest didn’t stop until the row she had started weeding was finished, even after break time was called.) They were proud of each other and of our accomplishments that day.

And even though it wasn’t finished, and would likely never completely be, that yard never looked better to me.

Laura Zoeller can be reached at zoeller5@verizon.net.