Our Very Small Gardener...

by - 7:05 PM

Gary has been helping me with a few time consuming and larger projects in the yard, since he doesn't have any work this week. A bunch of new oak trees have taken root in the flower beds, and a few plants needed to be moved, so those were projects that he helped with. There were also all of the old leaves needed raking out of the flower beds and plenty of weeds to pull. I like yard work, it's so much more full filling than house work. You can see everything you've accomplished, and I love to hang around in a nice yard. The temperature this week hasn't been anywhere near as high as it has been over the last several weeks, and rain has caused us to take a break a time or two. I have a few more little projects that I hope we can knock out tomorrow or Saturday, before we take a trip to the beach for a week. (It's all fun and games for the kids, but Gary's going to be doing some more work on the beach house.)

Anyway, Britt is big into helping now. The only problem is that he's not half as helpful as he thinks he is. For example, you might recall that a few weeks ago I found him with a cereal bowl full of toliet water, Ruth sopping wet and Britt saying "Ruff all cwean. I warshed baby Ruffie." Or perhaps you might remember the time earlier this summer where in his desire to clean the bathroom, he dumped large amounts of water all over the floor and I found him using one my dresses to scrub the floor. Or even more recently he was standing on a little chair in the kitchen pretending to cook, and then throwing every dish he could find in my sink of dirty water while I went out to throw out some cooking grease. Oh and did I mention that I had just washed each of those dishes?
So today, after asking over and over to get out of the pool and help rake, help cut the plants, help Daddy, help Momma, etc. I kept telling him to help Ruth play in the pool, but that didn't last long each time. Finally after putting Ruth down for a nap, I told him he could help pick up leaves and put them in the bucket. Gary and I sat on the swing and took a good 20 min break while he proceeded to take a handful of leaves at a time and transfer them to the garbage can. He almost knocked out one whole pile by himself. After our little break I got up and showed him how to push the leaves on the rake so that I could then lift the rake and dump most of the pile in the trash can at one time. He then carried limbs to the burn pile, and for a while picked up acorns to add to the garbage can.
He was a good little helper today. I've heard it said that if you channel a great force of water you get beautiful carved rivers (think the Great Canyon on the Colorado River), but if you don't have any direction you just get a muddy flood. Maybe we're instilling some work ethic in the boy, he just needs a little direction. Then again maybe not, after all the end of the yard cleaning season was Britt running in circles and throwing leaves in the air. Shame I didn't manage a picture of that.

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