The rhododendrons are blooming at the park. The weeds are blooming at my house. A picture of rhododendrons is better than a picture of weeds. Also, I nominate “rhododendron” as being one of the most difficult words to spell. I always have to look it up.

Somehow, I had a day off today. I usually work on Saturdays. Sometimes, it is my busiest day. I should confess that I had a client who wanted an appointment, but I turned it down because I already worked a lot this week (maybe too much?) and didn’t want to drive to town for one. It’s the cost of gas, but also the time away from home: an hour of driving for an hour of work? There was a season when I gladly would have done that (when gas was $2.00 a gallon?), but not any longer.

Of course, then someone else contacted me who wanted a massage. They were so hopeful! Realistically, I could have texted the first person and told them I was available after all, and then scheduled a second one, and then it would have made sense gas wise for me to drive to town.

But I didn’t.

All week I was looking forward to having the day off. I wanted an uninterrupted block of time to play in the yard. Yard play is therapeutic for me and always brings a jolt of joy. But then I walked around the yard a bit yesterday, taking it all in, and got an unwanted reality check.

The yard is a disaster.

It needs a lot more than what I could give it in a day. It needs more than what I could probably ever do by myself.

I call it play, and try to frame it that way, but honestly? It’s a mess. We already had one round of weed eating done, but you couldn’t tell anymore. In past years, I believed that I might actually make progress on the weeds and eliminate them. In no time, I would coax my yard back into a blissful state of native plant wildness. I was so optimistic! If I pulled enough of the evil fern like weeds, put down cardboard and mulch, stayed on top of things, then maybe come spring there would be less of them. Maybe they would even go away! Continue Reading…