When I started this blog, my teenager knew that he didn’t want to be a character in it. This seemed reasonable to me, because I wouldn’t have wanted my adolescence to be publicly chronicled either. That’s why the only time Sam comes up in these posts is in context of yard work (and his Peru pix).
But here’s the godawful truth: we had three and four seventeen-year-old boys staying here for the last week, and they are so sweet, so handsomely male, so incandescently barely mature that I can’t pretend they’re not here and I can’t write about them directly, so I’m doing another yardwork post in their honor.
I love that these boys drink two gallons of milk a day. I love that they hoover down all the OJ. I love that they can eat a loaf of bread between meals in less than an hour (what a vicarious thrill!). I love that Sam is pushing 6′2″ and was recently 2′6″. I love that everything is new for them. And I love the fact that if they’re carefully fed and well hydrated, they can do projects that would take me weeks to accomplish.
I put in this border last year, and it turns out that I made the beds too narrow.
Woops! The shrubs and plants droop over the grass so it looks messy, and it’s hard to mow. Bob grew the lawn from seed, so it’s a horrible job to widen these beds. The problem has been obvious for a month, but all I did was tell the grass, Shoo. Those boys took care of it in two sessions.
Here is the bed after it was widened,
and here it is after we mulched it.
Those boys are the best.
(How to embarrass a teenaged boy: bribe him with food to work, and tell everyone what he accomplished.)
I guess we don’t have to tell you just how lucky you are - I think you seem to know it - in so many respects. (It’s good to know that bribery works, huh?)
Beautiful landscape beds and a beautiful home.
you are sooo lucky to have such good workers!