Oh, Do I Have Work To Do!
by James Glaser
February 10, 2012

Wanda went to the Madison Ladies Club meeting today and returned to tell me that we are going to be visited in the near future by some of the women who just love our yard and my workshop.

To be honest our yard looks pretty spectacular... from the road as you drive by, but up close it needs some work. My vegetable garden has a nice looking fence around it, and that fence hides a lot: a lot of weeds, soil that need tilling, and a potting shed that needs cleaning.

My shop looks fantastic from the road, but inside it is a shop, and shops get messy if you are doing any amount of work. My shop looks good if I spend a whole day putting tools away, cleaning the work surfaces and vacuuming the floors. Make that a day and a half.

It is still early spring here, and while we have wonderful plants all over the yard, it will be a couple months before things start flowering and probably four months before the place looks great.

I suppose it is good to get a kick start like this, and I know I need something like people coming over before I start hitting it hard, but I was having such a great time. I think the word is lollygagging. Sure I was working on my garden, but it was like the square foot method. I would make one square foot of the garden look perfect and think that was good. Yes, my shop looks pretty good, and you will not trip over cut-off boards on the floor, but it really is a mess, and I know I should put in that day and a half, but I thought I could do that over a month's time.

Do you think that Wanda just came up with this "visitor plan" to get me started? I never thought of her as devious, but she is way smarter than me, and she does like the place looking good. Well, either way—it worked. I hit the garden and made some great progress this afternoon. Wanda did a raking marathon this evening working until dark. She filled the truck bed with leaves and yard debris for a trip to the dump.

Wanda is not a slacker, but she does seem to enjoy yard work a lot more when we are both doing it. Like I said, she is a lot smarter than me, and I can just see her saying, "Oh yes, come over any time. We'll have tea."

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