~A Bitter Swallow~

Today I felt a bit under the weather. I tried to do a stint on the Wii Fit, but my tummy told me that wasn't going to happen. Instead, I opted out of the computerized exercise in favor of the mountains of outside exercise I knew was to be tackled today.

Dustin and I donned our work gloves, grabbed some shovels, rakes and his Pulaski, and headed out. That garden plot wasn't going to clear and dig itself. So we started digging and rakeing. Dustin wound up grabbing my son and headed to Lowe's for a pitchfork. They also grabbed a pair of gloves for my son. We went back to work raking and shoveling and digging and throwing. It was discovered that the area consisted largely of rocks, so I got the gloves off and bent to the task of picking out all of those rocks and tossing them into a pile.

The entire idea of digging out this enormous area was looming over us as one daunting task. Meanwhile, we could hear our neighbor across the road on his backhoe or with his chainsaw, and by the swearing we would hear issuing from that area, it sounded like he was having a rough time of it. After eating a hearty breakfast of potatoes, eggs, pears and muffins I prepared, Dustin decided to take a break from the arduous task of our yard, and go over to see if the neighbor could use some help.

While I sat plucking rocks from my soon-to-be garden bed, I heard wisps of their chit-chat blown over to my ears by the breezes. Friendly talk of hobbies and other manly chat. I could hear them working together on whatever the neighbor had going on- backhoes digging, chainsaws buzzing, rakes being drug across the rocky ground. Then, I noticed the sound of the backhoe seemed awfully close.. and looked up as Dustin walked into the yard, the machinery right behind him. Apparently the guy was thankful for Dustin's help, and offered to come use his machine to clear our plot area.

I grabbed my gear and got the heck out of the way. I watched gleefully as he maneuvered the machine through the plotted area, clearing out all the overgrown weeds, brush and vines. Now my space is clearly defined, and the pile for compost is enormous! Work that would have been painstakingly long and blistering took him all of five minutes, and now we are able to concentrate on getting the beds themselves defined, and getting them ready for seed.

It is nice to see that there is still such thing as neighbors helping neighbors, and them giving in return. I hope he understands how much that little bit of his time saved us so much back break and sweat. While I do not mind the hard work, I am glad to be able to save my energies for the garden itself. Thank you, kind neighbor!