A couple of weeks ago I was having a really stressful weekend.  Mr. A and I had a misunderstanding which only made things worse.  I texted him, only to find out he wasn't upset with me at all, instead, he thought I was upset with him!

After that I called him on the phone and the tears were rolling as I told him why I was so stressed out and listing all the things I had to get done.

Poor Mr. A, he tries, he really does.

He called me back in about an hour, and wanted to know if I wanted to go see a movie the next night.  I think he thought it would be a good way for me to get away from everything and relax.

Let me tell you something about Mr. A: he hates movies.  Only very rarely does he want to see a movie. He doesn't like wasting his time on movies.  To tell you the truth, I don't blame him. I feel let down after nearly every movie I watch.  Usually about halfway through I feel like I'm wasting time but I want to get my money's worth, too!!  On occasion a movie will come out that I'm interested in seeing, but not to the point where I'm dragging my guy there with me when I know he'll be bored to tears.  It's a lot more fun to do things together that you both enjoy, you know?  I mean, it's a nice gesture for Mr. A to suppress his true feelings about movies and take me, and I take him up on that occasionally, but to tell you the truth having to take out time to go watch a movie was only making me feel more stressed out.

So that night he gets home and he says, “Did you figure out which movie you want to go see tomorrow night?”  I told him I hadn't gotten around to it yet. Then I said, “Mr. A, I know you really don't like going to movies. Is there any chance that you would want to take those two hours we'd spend at the movie and help me in my garden instead?”

I think at first he thought it was a trick question, because he didn't answer me right away. Then after I told him I could really use his big strong muscles tackling those weeds in the garden he immediately assured me that he'd always rather do something physical like work in the garden than passively watching a movie.

So we spent two hours weeding the next morning. I had Mr. A work on the outer perimeter of the garden and let me tell you, he works about three times faster than me. I thought he might use our weed whacker, but he feels that the Scuffle Weeding Hoe works much better since it takes the weed down right to the root.

I worked on the inner part of the garden.  I was amazed at how much energy and stamina I had. I didn't sit down even once in the two hours that we worked.  That is just amazing for me.

Here is a before and after photo of my garden – I didn't do the best job at standing in the same position for the photos, but this is roughly the same area:

While Mr. A used the Scuffle Weeding Hoe, I used my pointed shovel to scrape along the surface of the dirt against the weeds and then rake them out of the way. I made piles, and Mr. A came in and removed the piles once I had a few.

We managed to get most of the weeds removed except for a few stray ones here and there.

I felt really proud of us. We didn't spend three hours of our lives going to see a movie both of us really didn't want to go see, we didn't have to drive 30 miles to get there, and we saved $20.

Instead, we spent the time working together and talking, and we accomplished in two hours what would have taken me working by myself at least 8 hours over a couple of weekends.

Do you have a garden?  Is it time for spring planting in your neck of the woods?