By Joan Whetzel
Well, it’s summer. The hottest time of the year. And, as
usual, we have some outdoor tasks to work on, besides the usual mowing and
edging.
For one, the HOA decided to complain about some mildew on
the exterior of our house. I thought we got rid of it all. But the (bleep)ing
Home Owner’s Association says we have some more. The only thing we could find
that could remotely construed as mildew, is upstairs, near the windows. The only
way to get to it, is to open one of the upstairs windows and climb out onto the
roof to scrub it off. Then have somebody in the front yard hand up the hose –
with the spray nozzle attached - so that it could be rinsed off. My daughter
and I were not thrilled with this. Turns out, all we had to say was “climb out
the window and onto the roof” for my 10 year-old granddaughter to break into a
fiendish grin, complete with evil glint in her eyes. She climbed out the window
with the greatest of ease and pranced around the roof scrubbing and rinsing
walls like there’s nothing to this chore. Oh, did we fail to mention to her
that this was a chore? Well, I guess if nobody tells her, she’ll still think
it’s fun.
Well after the lawn work and house cleaning, we went to get
the last load of rocks to complete our rock garden. The 10 year-old was not
particularly interested in helping with this one. Lugging heavy rocks, definitely
sounds like a chore. So here’s where the bribery really kicks in. We told her
we’d buy a few cans of spray paint – her color choice – and she could spray
paint a few of the rocks to scatter randomly throughout the rock garden. She’s
enamored with the idea of contributing artistically to the yardwork (i.e.
planting flowers) so this peaked her interest. We would also bring home her
favorite fast food lunch – this month it’s Chick-Fil-A. We also promised a trip to the pool when the
rock gardening was done.
So after lunch, we set back to work. The rock garden is all
laid now. It includes many, many
bags of plain brown rocks, one bag of red lava rocks (by demand of the 10
year-old) strewn around, and a smattering of painted rocks in coral, turquoise,
and shiny clear with glitter that make the rocks kind of look like opals when
the sun hits them right. Pretty cool! (Pictures will be uploaded to my Facebook
page.) And yes, the 10 year-old got her
trip to the swimming pool. Not that my daughter and I minded much. We worked up
enough of a sweat that the cool water felt good.
