Pulling Weeds, Hanging Pictures

AS I HAVE AGED, i have acquired the habit of going to be early, very early, and waking up and getting up early, usually about sunrise. In summer, a cup of coffee on a front porch surrounded by shrubs and trees helps me wake up.

When i had this house built, it was a barren construction site, a half acre of dirt and crabgrass surrounding the paint fresh ranch style house. I didn't think i had a chance. The place looked like the surface of the moon.

I have an aversion to paying somebody to make my yard pretty. Likewise, I have an aversion to tanning parlors, golf carts, personal trainers, and having somebody wait on me while i sit at a table in a restaurant.

All this may well be a cry for independence, for self sufficiency. My mother was a bit doting. So, after finally realizing that I had closed on the house, and that it would bring difficulties to back out now, i went to work on the yard, slowly.

That was eight years ago, when I had just turned fifty. One weed at a time. A tree, then another, about my height. the shrubs. Now the trees have grown to twenty feet, and promise much more, there is a thick layer of lush green grass, and, through several several droughts, it all looks quite a bit better than it did when i started.

The inside of the house was as barren as the yard, and equally laden with pure potential. I put cheap impressionistic prints all over the walls, and i think it looks good. every painting print has water as a theme. I don't know why. evolutionary memory?

several years ago a pipe in one of the bathrooms broke, the house flooded, and i thought about giving up, again. the repairs, which included a complete interior repainting, cost me one thousand dollars, and the insurance company seventeen thousand.

It took me two years to redecorate the walls, but, it got done, much as before. Almost every day my mother asks me if i got my yardwork done, and i almost every day i tell her that yard work is never done, unless i am missing something.

what remains at the end of our lives is memory, and all this will be a good one for me.