love grows

The spring weather has been so very strange this year. Normally, here in Oklahoma, we can start gardening in February! This year, though, has been quite different. We are in late April and we just had an overnight freeze a couple of nights ago and there's a possible one coming this week as well! Good grief! So, instead of jumping right into gardening as soon as the first warm temps showed up, we've had to take it slow and do a little bit here and a little bit there. A few weeks ago, on one of our actual warm spring days of the season the boys helped me do some cleaning up and gardening in both the front and back yards.

The boys weeded the fire pit area all by themselves! I was so proud! Actually, now that I'm thinking about it...I'm pretty sure I still owe them some money for doing that...!!! The boys actually had a contest going on who could pull a weed with the longest roots! Ha! Whatever it takes, I guess!

I took on our beast of a rose bush. Ugh. I'm glad the area is cleaned up BUT there's part of me that wishes I had never took on that task alone in the first place. I knew I would probably get stuck by the rose bush thorns but I had no idea that those pricks and scratches wouldn't just hurt in the moment but would swell and sting and itch for days to come! Yikes! I'm convinced, to this day, that rose bush thorns are in some way poisonous...even though my loving husband tells me they are not. I pulled all the weeds around the rose bush, trimmed the monkey grass, trimmed the actual rose bush branches themselves and even removed the rose bush branches that had died. When I got done I looked like I had been in a fight with a monster cat! But it's done and that's all that matters! Whew! My wounds eventually healed...

When we moved to the front garden Ash decided to go inside and play video games while Maddox and I cleaned up the front yard. I trimmed monkey grass and Maddox helped me with his child sized scissors! Ha! He is so very cute! He didn't slow down for a second. He trimmed monkey grass strand by strand with those teeny tiny scissors and stayed with me the entire time. I was happy to have the help but I was definitely even happier to have the company. With two boys so close in age it's not very often that I get one on one conversation with either of them but, on this day, I was lucky enough to get some of that time with my youngest boy. We talked about everything from Pokemon, to school, to football and everything in between. I don't find yard work relaxing but it was worth it for the quiet conversation with my son.