The Path

Posted on August 23, 2013 by TJ

We had been going to the Farmer’s Market every Friday morning, but EJ has been very busy and working very hard at his job this week, and he was very tired, so we didn’t go this morning. We need honey, but we have enough eggs.

Yesterday after EJ and then JJ left for work, I mowed the lawn. It is usually JJ’s job, but this week has been busy and I knew he wouldn’t get to it, so I just went ahead and did it. Radar showed storms moving in quickly, but I figured that it wasn’t raining until it was raining, so I went ahead anyway. It ended up not raining until about an hour after I finished.

I actually enjoy mowing the lawn. When I was a child, I somehow figured out that if I had to do something, I might as well do it with a good attitude and find something about it that I enjoyed. So although there are tasks that I can’t exactly say I LOVE like I love reading or walking Danny, there are many tasks that I very much enjoy. Mowing the lawn is one of those tasks. I really like the way the lawn looks after it’s mowed, and I like the smell of freshly mowed grass.

Sunday I had finished digging up all the bricks in the path through my garden. I am digging up the bricks because I would now prefer to just mow the path instead of having to weed it. Today after my guys left for work (and after I had taken Danny for a walk, of course), I lined the edges of the path with bricks and hauled the excess bricks to the new place where I am stacking them. (I ran out of room in the other place.) I used the wheelbarrow so I didn’t have to take lots and lots of trips.

Half of the path I removed bricks from. — Part of the garden path

The path winds along one side of the house and most of another so I was only going to do a little bit, but I ended up throwing the shoe and doing it all. Sometimes I don’t know when to stop. I just keep doing a little bit more and a little bit more of a project until it is done. After I dug up the bricks Sunday, my back hurt for several days. I am sure my back is going to hurt some more from today’s work. When my back hurts, I always wonder how EJ can endure the pain he lives with every day.

Danny nicely refusing to move from the hole he dug in my path. — Danny nicely refusing to move from the hole he dug in my garden path.

Danny came out with me. When I returned after taking a load of bricks to the stacking place, I saw he had dug a hole in the middle of the path and was lying in it. You can’t really see it from the picture, but it was quite deep. I tried to call him into the back yard where he had dug a hole to lie in a few weeks ago, but he just nicely refused to move. Danny has become an expert at non-violent civil disobedience. Whenever he doesn’t want to do something, he just wags his tail and smiles and stays where he is. I think I should change his name to Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr.

I ended up letting Danny enjoy his hole. I can fill it in later.

After I finished the path, Danny and I went inside. Danny actually obeyed me this time when I called. I finished my inside chores. I will spend the rest of the evening relaxing with a cat on my lap.