Oh, the joys of yardwork

Yesterday brought an annual tradition to the Sweet household: the spring garden clean up. I'm sure many fine people were out working in their gardens all over the world yesterday but for our family, the event actually begins months earlier. Like, in the fall.

I'm terribly lazy. I'm certain if you look one or two generations back in the family tree, you'll find an actual sloth in there somewhere. The laziness kicks in full force when there's something that needs to be done that involves one or more of my least favorite activities, for example: sweating, physical exertion, interacting with insects, contracting poison ivy, etc. Oh, wait. Gardening involves all those things! Perhaps this explains why every fall, when I should cut back the year's dead growth from the three gardens I should never have planted, I just pretend that tiny gnomes will work tirelessly on my behalf beneath the winter snow so that when it all melts and spring arrives, voila! Gardens are clean and ready for new growth.

Never happens.

And still, I never learn my lesson.

Instead, I begin a panicked frenzy in the late winter, wondering when the snow will melt enough for me to get out there and hack away at last year's stalks. There's a tiny window, you see. What typically happens is all in one week the snow melts, the temperatures soar and the new shoots come up...and I haven't cut anything back yet. Then it takes three times as long because instead of clear-cutting the damn plants, I have to gingerly clip around the baby shoots.

This cycle of idiocy has repeated itself for two? three? years now.

Luckily this year we somehow managed to have a weekend day that fell during the magical week of melting. I was not going to fall victim to the cycle again this year! Ben and I stood in our driveway at early o'clock yesterday, armed with tiny rakes and hand-held cutter thingies and, in my case, a Breaking Benjamin/Three Days Grace/Flyleaf playlist.

Me: All right. You ready?
Ben: Ready.
Me: You know what you're doing?
Ben: *gestures vaguely to one of the beds* Cutting down all that brown shit.
Me: Um, yeah. Pretty much. Good luck.

I'm pretty sure that, just like last year, some weeds were carefully trimmed back while some purposefully planted plants were hacked out of the ground. Ah, well. Such is gardening at the Sweet House.
Anyone want to take bets as to what happens in November? *snort*