Home and Garden

Proverbs 24:27
Finish your outdoor work and get your fields ready; after that, build your house.

I hate yard work. I am not altogether crazy about the outside as a concept in itself. I really love mid to high seventies, sunny, slight breeze (not enough to muss my hair) kind of days. But I have very little tolerance for any variation.
Strangely enough, I do love nature. I love trees and animals and sunrises. I love water, from over here that is. I do not want to be in actual contact with the water. It’s very wet. Again; hair issues. I think of all the things that God puts in front of us, nature speaks of His majesty in the clearest terms.
The Mr. does not like yard work either. He may be even worse than I am. I like pretty yards, I just want someone else to do it. He however, seems to abhor any attention whatsoever given to yards. When I buy the occasional flat of petunias to try to pretend we’re actual citizens of the earth, he seems to take no pleasure in them at all and only wants to know how much they cost. Yeah, cuz he’s such the frugal guy.
I used to try to do a little sprucing up in the yard when the kids were little but being the needy young woman that I was, I didn’t know how to enjoy it for its own merit. I would plant flowers and do my sorry best to make our yard look pretty and I would get just about zero feedback from the Mr. As you know, he’s quite a beast.
So I quit. I stopped planting the petunias, stopped filling pots for the front porch. And you can guess the results. Our yard sucks. It’s really a shame because we have the cutest little bungalow with a wide front porch and really, we would have very little to do to make it lovely. But he doesn’t care, and I need more affirmation than he has hours to give.
Why do I do that? I enjoy the results of a little yard attention, why can’t I motivate myself just to plant the flowers, fix up the porch and breathe in the yard of my dreams (or at least, not of my nightmares.)? Because I’m childish. I not only want what I want, I would like someone else to do the work, and if I happen to put my hand to it I would like a standing ovation. Every day.
I wonder what would happen if on a slightly breezy high seventies sunny day like today, I just potted a few petunias and then...looked at them. I could even water them on a regular basis. What if I just picked up a chair or two to put on my wide front porch and then I sat in them. Alone with my coffee on Saturday morning. What if the Mr. asks me how much I spent and I just tell him, without becoming defensive. What if I did a little yard work because it’s what I know I should do, it’s what I think someone should do and there’s no reason I can’t do it?
Probably I wouldn’t make snide comments to the Mr. about our yard. Possibly I’d pull out in the morning and back in in the evening and it would bring a smile to my face. Hopefully the neighbors would stop hating us.
And I’d stop feeding my own laziness and discontentedness.
How many things in life are like my yard? Things that offend us, that we criticize or complain about. Things we think someone else needs to fix and inspire us to point out the other guy’s inadequacies. Things that we could put our own hands to; but we choose to point a finger instead of picking up a shovel. Things don’t get better and the disappointment just keeps going deeper when we could be the one to fix it up.
Maybe there's something you've been criticizing that you could be the one to fix. Go plant a flat of petunias, buy a nice chair and do a little yard work. Of the heart or otherwise.

Psalm 65:12-14
12 The grasslands of the desert overflow; the hills are clothed with gladness. 13 The meadows are covered with flocks and the valleys are mantled with grain; they shout for joy and sing.