I had an interesting Sunday, last weekend. Although I usually make a reasonable attempt at pushing myself, I can admit that there are almost as many times where I succumb to flopping down in a comfy chair with a cigar on the weekends as opposed to getting at some of the things I should be accomplishing, like, oh, I don’t know… WORKING OUT! But when we arrived from our trip to the East Coast almost two weeks ago, I was taken aback at the state of my back yard.
The back yard is where the majority of our daily sunlight strikes, with very little impacting the front yard. This means that growth, both for lawns and weeds, is at least two-fold in the back yard. It can make weekends challenging, since I usually prefer my Sundays to be a time of relaxation before getting back into the work week with maybe a workout thrown in. Since I was kind enough to ignore the yard the previous weekend, I knew I would have to attack it last weekend or face some significant difficulties in bring the weeds a and lawn growth under control before the autumn struck.
Cue last Sunday morning. My well-meaning intentions included waking at 5 or 6 so that I could get started on the yard before the Sun rose high enough to turn it into a proverbial frying pan. Given that my toddler had us up at about 4:45 a.m. on Saturday morning, my body fiercely objected to waking at such an hour. So I rolls out of bed just shy before 9:00 a.m. Okay, not such a great start. I started my morning by sitting down with some caffeine and watching an episode of Star Wars: obi-Wan Kenobi. If you haven’t watched it, I highly recommend it.
I stepped outside in the morning heat and my oldest son, Nathan decided to join me. He actually wanted to help, so I had him grab his gardening gloves and gave him a weed-pulling job on the promise of letting him use the weed whacked later on. I started by mowing all the overgrown grass while Nathan plucked all then weeds from the Stoney path we have on the west side of the back yard. by the time I had mowed the lawn, he had finished pulling every weed. I mean, that area was immaculate. I was reasonably impressed and a deal is a deal, so he got the weed whacked out and I instructed him on where and how he was to use it. he went to work.
I wound up weeding the large, concrete circle planter that used to house an actual tree while Nathan finished whacking the weeds, as it were. He worked hard and followed instructions. I’m embarrassed to admit that I was quite impressed at the work acumen he was showing this morning. Once he had been using the weed whacked for a while, he asked to take a break and go inside, which made sense since the Sun was starting to make things unbearable. I was soaked myself, having toiled in the back yard for about two hours at that point.
He went inside and I soon discovered WHY he wanted to take a break… he had used the weed whacked too close to his play structure and busted both sides of the cord the weed whacked uses. And easy fix but to a 7-year old, he was likely done because it would trim weeds anymore. It was a good idea for him to cool off and get some water in him at that point anyway. I finished up what I was doing, followed by a 1-litre bottle of cold water, some fruit/veggie juice and a nice cigar. My Sunday had finally arrived…
I decided to spare all of you from the dampness showing through the lower part of that Superman shirt but as you can clearly see from the damp sheen on my forehead, it took quite a while for me to cool down and in fact, it didn’t happen until I got back inside. I performed a quick, 30-minute marine workout and once I cleaned myself up, I had to run to the grocery store to grab a few essentials And spent the rest of my day inside the cool sanctuary of my home while doing start-of-week laundry.
The only unfortunate part is that between the heat, the yard work, the workout and everything else, my blood sugars played a fun game they like to call “roller coaster.” I bounced low and high a number of times throughout the day, proving yet again that just about everything affects blood sugars. I had it under control by the time I crashed into bed, but it added to the overall exhaustion. Looking forward to the coming weekend to see what activities can potentially be done with the kids instead of focused on yard work. ☯️
The Blogging Buddhist 