Improvement

"Gardens are not made by singing, 'Oh how beautiful,' and sitting in the shade."  Rudyard Kipling

Let's talk about home ownership for a second.  It's such a responsible grown up thing, owning a house.  Nothing screams, "Hey!  I'm an adult!" like buying a house.  Buying mine was actually a lot less dramatic than I expected-- it was just the natural process of things.  When it came, it came without fireworks.

Living in my house has turned out to be the dramatic thing.  Did you know that things in houses actually break down sometimes?  I didn't know that.  Nothing ever broke in my parent's house.  They had a magic sort of property that never needed maintaining.  That probably explains why I never had to repair anything in my parents' house.  My house is different.  It's like a temperamental three-year-old that loves me one second and wants to destroy me the next.

I've put a lot into my house too!  And still, it repays me with leaky toilets and unreliable appliances.  Is this what I get for giving you a sprinkler system, House?  Really?!  Rooms always need cleaning, even the rooms I never go into.  Add a couple of dogs and birds to the mix, and it's a party.  A party that I have to clean up after.  If I take a day off from cleaning, it looks (and smells) like a small family of raccoons has taken up residence in my main floor.

Don't even get me started on the yard.  Whose idea was it to buy the double lot on the corner?  It definitely couldn't have been my idea.  I'm much smarter than that.  Nonetheless, I'm stuck with something that keeps me occupied every weekend.  My weeds are the reason why I don't have a social life.

The yard has come a long way, though.  Since moving in, and with the help of my family, we've installed a sprinkler system, built a fence, laid sod, and put up a hammock.  (Personally, the hammock is my favorite.)  It felt so good to get those projects done.  I looked at my home and saw the immediate improvement and felt that we had really accomplished something.

Then something strange happened.  The sod kept growing.  Some weeds even poked their way through the sod.  I could put off mowing it, I suppose.  But, seeing as how I don't want to have jungle animals moving in and eating my dogs, it's become a weekly activity for me.  Mowing.  Assuming that the lawnmower decides to work, and it never does.  I try not to swear, unless I'm working in my yard.  Then my vocabulary changes a bit.

It's never done, maintaining and improving my house.  Should I choose to get lazy and neglect my duties as a homeowner, it might be all right for a while.  Eventually, though, people would notice.  Given enough time, the weeds would take over the yard, and the interior of the home would deteriorate.  I would have destroyed my house.  If I want this house to become my dream home, I'll have to continue putting in the work.  It's not enough to put in the lawn.  I have to mow it too.  And then I'll have to mow it again.

As I spent my time yesterday working in my backyard, I realized that I'm kind of like my house.  It's a lot of work to be done with me until I become the person I want to be.  I'm not talking about cosmetic changes either.  It's those imperfections inside my personality that really need my attention.  Should I choose to ignore my obligations as a person to improve myself, I may eventually find myself deteriorated inside and out.

And the learning and doing is never done.  I thought I already learned how to be patient at least a few dozen times, but I'm somehow still confronted with challenges that require me to practice patience.  I thought I knew how to be kind, until I realize that I'm sometimes not.  Bad habits, like weeds, have a way of creeping in uninvited if I'm not carefully and constantly pulling them out.  I suspect that this job will never be done, not anytime soon anyway.  Maybe somewhere in forever I'll end up being the person I'm meant to be.  Until then, I just best remember not to take any time off from trying to be that person today.

Now, back to soaking up the water in my flooded basement.