Clear the Way for New Growth

Today's weather is to die for!!  I got to go outside and rake and turn soil in my veggie garden.  My hubby prefers to mulch most of the leaves into the grass, which is fine because it means less work for me:)  But, my flower beds don't get mowed . . . obviously.  So, I leave the leaves in the flower beds until Spring so I don't have to mulch twice--I'm cheap. 

SO, today I rake and rake and rake until I realize that the fence is getting tangled up with dead vines and leaves.  A couple of years ago, chainsaw in hand, my hubby and the kids and I worked on the "other side of the fence" for almost an entire day getting things cleaned up and beautified.  It was wonderful.  Now I'm seeing that I'm going to have to schedule in some maintenance:(  One of this kids' chores is picking up sticks and disposing of them over said fence, but they are apparently inefficient at the whole throwing part.  I need to get out there and show them how to throw like a javelin (spelling?).  When I got on the other side today I realized the sticks were piled up underneath some new but dead growth.  So what I had was a layer of sticks, a layer of vine-like growth, and another layer of sticks.   YUCK!!  I worked hard getting things untangled and sorted.

I was finished!!  I stepped back and surveyed my hard work--just to discover you couldn't even tell I had been out there.  I'm assuming that it's better than before, but I can't tell.  Come to think of it, a lot of my daily life is like that.  I wake up, get kids off to school then clean the house of all evidence that someone actually lives here.  Nobody notices that the three pairs of shoes and box of spilled crayons are no longer in the living room.  They just know that now they have space to get dirty again:)  I just have to keep telling myself that although what I do may go unappreciated, it's obviously not appreciated when I don't do it.  So, I will continue to daily maintain the chaos and make life easier for those whom I serve, and I will remind myself to  smile--because I know I worked hard and accomplished something today.

I guess if life stayed clean and uncluttered, there would be no room for new growth like the vines that cover my fence and make it beautiful all summer:)  Beauty IS in the eye of the beholder.