Lil e has been “helping” me with yardwork ever since she was six. I used to hand her the clippers, and just aim her at a giant azalea bush in the front yard. I carefully showed her the very thorny vine infesting the poor azalea.

She clipped that vine right down to its roots and hollered, “Get out of Miss Rebecca’s flowers, you thorns! Get back to the devil where you belong!”

She wanted to mow, but she was too little to reach the handle of the lawnmower.

Now she’s big enough to be actually useful – and get paid – so e and a earned some back-to-school shopping money doing yardwork. And what needed doing? Trimming the azaleas. Of course. And getting rid of the same stupid vine – it really is insidious.

They worked for a couple of hours, destroying thorns, cutting down three small maple trees that had been growing up in the mix, and trimming out dead, too-tall, and too-spraggly azalea branches. About a dozen leaf-bags full of branches and leaves!

I joked about it for a while:

You know when 3-yr-olds cut their own hair?

That’s what my yard looks like. (sigh)

But actually, they did a really good job.  :)  Next time I’m turning them loose with the weedwhacker….