To my mom

I know it is not Mother's Day, but with such great weather I have been doing a lot of yard work, and it has made me think of my mom.
Last June my mom came up to visit us for a week and as guilty as I feel, I put her to work. We did tons of yard work and by the end of her visit I no longer felt like the yard was someone else's. As we began simple clean up, I would mention something I liked or disliked about the yard/garden and before I knew it my mom was gathering the necessary tools and giving orders. We made drastic changes that made great memories.

One particular thing we did was cut down a dieing pine tree that was next to my front window, leaving a large gap in the garden. My mom hinted at going to the nursery to buy a "grandma tree" but we never got the time. After she left and I continued the yard work I found a beautiful Rhododendron bush that blooms salon pink. I decided to get it out of the shadows of larger bushes and plant it in the gap. It is now in full bloom and every time I look at it I think of my mom. (Picture above)

Since starting a family and buying a home I find myself fixing, adding, or changing a lot things that I really don't have experience with. I credit my confidence to my mom, I have never seen her hesitate to do a job on her own. It is great to work hard and have a great finished product.

During her visit some of the things we did; we pushed back and trimmed over grown bushes, adding a 2 ft. width to my yard and opening it up (made a big difference), we filled in an old garden patch and planted grass. One of the most painstaking projects was to lay a brick path connecting all of the previous paths (the old owners thought it was a good idea to spread tiny little rocks to fill in gaps instead of finishing the paths).
To put it bluntly we kicked ass! And we did it by ourselves - thanks mom!