This past weekend I helped my parents with some gardening and yard work. It was a lot of fun, surprisingly. Or not so surprisingly, I guess. I’ve always liked doing work outside–mowing the lawn, shoveling the driveway, etc. Being outside, side by side with my dad, doing some hard manual labor always made me feel more useful than being inside vacuuming or dusting. But that’s another topic for another day.
On Sunday we worked together to first trim the bushes. I used a trimmer to make sure all of them were perfectly rounded and flat on the top. I felt like I was back in ceramics, smoothing out all the bumps on a newly spun pot. It was nice to fashion it with my own hands. Anyway, after that finished we had to cut up one of the trees in our yard that was having an identity crisis.
I say this because when we first bought the tree so many years ago all of its branches were growing downward. It’s a crabapple tree, so its branches droop downward. I guess that downward growth was forced by man when it was just a little tree, so now that it’s growing up, it’s starting to rebel just a bit. A few of the branches on the top are growing straight up! It looks like the tree is vomitting new green leaves. Unfortunately for it, as healthy as the branches were, we called over Usman uncle and his chain saw to cut the new branches all of. Sorry tree, but pain is beauty.
Anyway, with all the trees and bushes trimmed up and pretty, I noticed that our yard was still missing something… flowers! So yesterday when I went with ammi to Randazzo’s, we picked up some flowers and brought them back home. In the afternoon I went oustide to plant them.
Side track: our garage is loaded with things my parents are taking to Brazil, and the shelf that holds all the gardening supplies is hidden behind a giant king size mattress that is leaning up against it.
With no gloves and no small spade, I used my bare hands and a giant shovel to bring up the soil, and pat down the dirt after I had placed the flowers in their place. It was actually a lot of fun to have my hands in the dirt again. It made me wonder why we need to use gloves in the first place… to protect our dainty hands from getting dirty? What’s a sink for…
Anyway, I finished planting the flowers, and wanted to make sure the dirt and mulch was well packed down, so I used my feet to stomp the dirt back into place. Ammi came outside to water the newly planted flowers, so she unravelled the hose. I was too dirty to go back inside. So before I did, I asked ammi if I could use the hose water to clean up a bit.
Man, oh, man! I haven’t felt so refreshed in a long long time. I forgot how nice and cold hose water is, and how it’s stream of water feels like your dipping your hands into a river. I washed up my hands and my feet, and then decided to go the extra mile and wash my face… and take a drink! I haven’t done that since I was in middle school. Ah, good times.
Anyway, here’s the finished product:
wow that’s really strange because yesterday I used our hose outside after 5 years. It felt great hold that familiar green hose and feeling the cold water pouring out into my hands… water fight anyone?!