In the Garden

Monday was a very pretty day weather-wise, so the boys and I went outside to tend to my rose garden. Most of the tending consisted of me staring at the roses wondering how I let them get in such rough shape and wondering out loud what I should do next. Trim? Leave them alone? No clue. Eventually I decided to trim the roses back, and I gave each little helper a galvanized silver bucket to collect fallen leaves. Either my instructions were not clear enough, or I was overly ambitious in my expectations of them following me and picking up debris, because things did not go according to plan. Turns out the silver buckets make a cool scraping noise if you drag them behind you. So they'd walk from the garden into the porch area, and back.

They'd briefly stop for a meeting of the minds and to check out how the pile of rose limbs were growing.

Then off in the other direction. All the while dragging the silver buckets.

I stayed on task, and cut the roses back. My thinking is that if the roses rebound from this cutting, they will be fine, but if they don't grow back....well, then likely I would have killed them mid-summer anyway. Survival of the fittest here.

Eventually the meeting of the minds started happening way back in the yard, near the compost pile. I fear that rats and snakes live back there, so I always call them away from this area.

Cole usually listens, but Grady prefers to give this look.

Elvis is also comes right away.

Grady finally gave in and came towards the house, where he made the wheelbarrow into a toy. Wheels!

And Cole walked the line.

Other than getting to spend some fun outside time with the boys, this was a good morning for two reasons. One, the roses are now under control and no longer look like they might overgrow the house, and two, boy does being outside wear the kids out. They napped very well. Score!