The Hardest Part First

One of the things that my Dad taught me as a kid was to do the hardest part of a task first.  That way when you were tired, you were doing the easier stuff and less likely to make an important mistake.  I try to apply this to everything in our life.  And it works for the most part.  Even if I have to break a task into multiple parts, it's easier to go back to it when I know that the hardest parts are already done.

So for weeding at my parent's house, I started with the front yard.  It was hardest because of my son.  I was going to need to be hyper alert to make sure that he didn't go running off of the front porch.  It was made slightly harder, after the fact, by the Jackson Vine.  Oh, by the way, in Florida that vine is known as saw briar.

The next hardest part was a bed directly against the back of their house.  It has never been mulched or had landscape cloth put down so the weeds were well dug into the soil.  And the soil, which is clay, has been hard baked but the temperatures the past few weeks.  It also has several very thorny plants, including two roses.  There are not many fears for my son in the backyard because it is fully fenced.  And I can keep a close eye on him, even in the pool, regardless of which garden bed I am working on since all the beds are local to the pool.

After the first bed, I moved to the large areas surrounding the pond.  Dad has become addicted to raising Koi and has a pond that is half the size of their pool.  And the surrounding landscaping is equal to the entire pool area, pool and all.  Given how the work was done, I didn't expect any real problems with this area.  And there haven't been any real weed pulling problems.  The problem is the sheer volume of the weeds!  This area contains large areas with no plants at all, just rocks.  And those areas looked like they were debating becoming part of the lawn.  Given another couple of weeks, they probably would have!

This is not normal for my parents.  While Dad doesn't do heavy weeding in those areas, he doesn't typically allow it to get so incredibly overgrown.  If nothing else he will spray weed killer.  But right now, it's starting to look good.  I putting the lack of care down to the fact that Dad hasn't been home for five weekends out of the last six.  And his job has been very very stressful during this time.  Things have been so hectic for him that he even has someone coming in to do the lawn occasionally. 

Anyways, I have about a quarter of that area left to do tomorrow.  And I was getting kind of panicked wondering if I was going to be able to get this done by Sunday.  My parents have been out of town all week and are due back some time on Sunday.  I want this done by then.  So I walked the other garden beds....and took a huge sigh of relief.  There is no denying that the other beds need weeding.  But as of today, only one small section of that is as bad as the section around the pond.  The rest of the beds are weedy but it's a few weeds here and a few weeds there - not a carpet of weeds from one side to the other.

So, hopefully, tomorrow I will be able to get to, and through, the easiest part.  At the very least I will finish the hardest parts and then I can go back early Sunday and finish the easiest parts.  And knowing that those other beds are much easier has kind of buoyed my energy level.  I'm well over half way through, probably over 3/4 of the way through.  The hardest part is almost done.