102. I Hate Yard Work

We all have the one chore we hate and wish someone, anyone would do it for us. 

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Hi, Nora. It’s Melanie from North Carolina. I hate yard work. Seriously. I detest it. And it’s not that I don’t wish for my yard to be beautiful. I absolutely do. I want the clean cut, beautiful green lawn without clover or wild onions. I love beautifully placed flowers that add a splash of color and blew me around.

I need the leaves raked and placed in the neat brown bags at the curb awaiting pickup from the city truck. But you have to get outside, roll up your sleeves, and stay committed to have a yard like that. You have to put in the time. That was my husband’s job. He took care of all of that. He made our yard look fantastic.

To the point where people would stop and say, Your yard looks great! What’s your secret? When Rodney died two and a half years ago, the yard work became my work. So did many other jobs that I didn’t plan for. Nobody ever tells you that when you experience the death of your partner, that you go through all of the work of grieving on top of inheriting more work that your partner did.

Part of that inheritance was yard work and boy, Do I suck at it? The very first time I used our riding mower, I let it run out of gas. A couple of months later, I ran over some sticks, which somehow bounced back on me and cut my leg. I’ve fallen off the riding mower, pulled a muscle starting the weed eater, and been stung by yellow jackets because apparently they don’t like it when you stand too close to their nest to trim some limbs.

I even cut the extension cord to the trimmer with the trimmer while scalping my bushes last month. And by doing this, I somehow ended up cutting the power to most of the electrical outlets in my house. If this were a job that I had been hired for and would be expecting payment, I would have been fired at least 15 times for my incompetence, and I probably wouldn’t even care.

Because as I said before, I hate yard work, but it has to be done. Last week I came home from taking my dog to the vet. I was exhausted from working a 40 plus hour work week. I was trying to figure out which kid had some kind of lesson that night, plan what we were going to have for dinner and remind myself to make the car payment online before it was late.

When I drove up to my house, I couldn’t believe what I found. My lawn had been mowed. The weeds in the front natural area had all been cut down. The tree limbs that were hanging over the driveway and the sidewalk had all been cut back. And the wild vines that had been slowly creeping up the bushes towards my house were all gone.

My friend’s dad and her brother in law had been working for the last hour and took care of all of that for me while I was gone. What would normally take me four to five hours of time to complete, they did in an hour. They did it while I was gone and wouldn’t accept any money for it. They just wanted to help.

This is how I know That it’s going to be okay. Even when you feel like you are your most overwhelmed point and you don’t know how you can get it all done. Someone jumps in and says, I got this. You go and focus on something else that needs to be done. Something where you won’t hurt yourself or knock out the power to your house.