I'm starting to believe that it takes a three day weekend for anything to really get accomplished in homes where both parents work. A common theme in my recent posts has been how with each week I seem to be falling farther and farther behind. But then came Memorial Day. An important day for so many truly important reasons. But also a much needed break from the grind.
But "a break from the grind" didn't mean bbqs and bags for us. It didn't even really mean a true three-day weekend. Husband has to work 2 holidays a year and this year, he had Memorial Day. I'm not complaining: Of course I wished I could have spent the beautiful day with him and the kids. But Husband working Memorial Day is much preferable to him working Thanksgiving or Christmas, both of which he has done in the past. Plus, he got to work from home. And shaving off that hour-long commute meant we had just enough time over the weekend to make substantial progress on one of our most-dreaded, and oft-put-off chores: yard work.
Yard work this Memorial Day meant planting the side of our house. Our house is not a new one. It was built in the early 1990s, and has gone through several owners. But none of those owners apparently had a lick of landscaping sense. I'm not saying I know a lot about landscaping - I don't. But I do know enough to hire someone who knows about landscaping to get a plan made that works with our house. So we did. We've spent the past few years pulling out the hodge-podge of random plants placed too close to the house by previous owners and replacing them with teeny tiny bushes that will hopefully someday grown into a nicely landscaped yard.
For our front yard, we hired the planting out to a local nursery. Among other things, we needed a new retaining wall, so we knew were going to have hire someone anyway. We just let them do the whole thing. But the side yard was different. We again went to a landscaper to get a plan made up with local bushes that would grow well, didn't have a lot of pollen and didn't need a lot of upkeep (our criteria). But the cost of having it all installed was outrageous. So we planned to do it ourselves. Of course, as soon as we made this plan, our air conditioner broke. We needed a new HVAC system. So the plan for planting was out, and the side yard became a weed garden.
But this year, the side yard was back on our to-do list (I'm sure, much to my neighbor's delight). We went to a nursery, bought $800 worth of plants and broke out the shovels. It took all weekend and a lot of hard work by Husband, but it already looks a million times better. We aren't done, but serious progress has been made.
There's no way we could have accomplished everything we did this weekend without that extra day. And there are so many chores we still need to do that could really use an extra day. Or at least an entire weekend without rain. If only every weekend could be a three-day weekend. . . Maybe then I'd have a prayer of some day catching up!
Karen
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