The First Rule of Yard Work

I spent most of Sunday with a shovel.  I'm not bragging.  I am not claiming to be more of a man than you.  Okay, maybe a little bit.  I'm a manly man.  I'm shovel ready.  What you lookin' at?!
  
I regularly find myself kneedeep, or up to my elbows, or halfway through a weekend, getting beat up pretty good by Mother Earth.  The first rule of yard work:  there is no such thing as yard work. It's play time.  It's go time.  It's a labor of love.  It's a pain in the ass.  It's man vs planet.  Handtool vs horticulture.  Think MMA with a hoe.  Okay, stop thinking about that.

  I showed up at my dad's house at 8am with a good pair of gloves and several instruments of destruction.  When I step into the ring against an established yard. . . I come prepared.  A couple of shovels and a chainsaw.  Yeah, that's right Mother Earth: I'm packin' heat.  It's just a little electric chainsaw,  kind of a 'metrosexual' chainsaw; but it works great for cutting free a shrub's root ball.  

My pop wants to modernize the landscaping scheme in his front yard.  So we decide to start with a clean slate.  Strip it down to the skeleton.  So we dig up a sixpack of azaleas, a stand of heavenly bamboo and a trio of roses.  And for dessert: a pair of blueberry bushes.  And all of it gets packed into the bed of the pickup.  We're going to transplant this forest in my yard.

We work well together: my dad and I.  We didn't always.  But we no longer compete against each other.  We're too old now to waste energy on in-fighting.  Teamwork is easier.  Toiling, side by side with my dad is awesome.  

We took my yard by surprise: it never saw us coming.  Shovels digging, dirt flying; we grabbed those plants and shoved 'em where the sun shines.  Within an hour we had it whooped.

I bid the old man farewell.  It was 2pm and he was late for a date with a tall glass of iced tea.  But I still had a bone to pick with an overgrown photinia.  And the lawn was mocking me.  I smiled, wiped a clump of mud from my cheek and marched across the yard with a pair of long handled loppers.  The first rule of yard work:  there is no such thing as yard work.