Last night, I gardened until post sunset. I didn’t put much effort into the flower garden before our vacation to Iowa, but now home, I went to work. At the garden store in late-July, flowers are begging to leave the shelves. Their blossoms – if any – are stretching high, competing with the others in their crazy small dirt compound.  I found chock-full pots of purple cone flowers and brown-eyed Susans. They were in the big pots. Normally I wouldn’t pay for those, but I was desperate and noticed they were so big that I could split them before I put them in the ground.

At home, Liam helped dig the holes in my ledge-filled land. This was good division work for Liam. “If I paid $9 for this big pot and split the big plant into three plants, how much did each plant cost?” I realized over the summer that the lines of multiplication and division had become blurry. Note to self: Come August, encourage more than reading books and drawing.

With my garden gloves dirty and my back aching, I shoved off for the night, looking forward to seeing my work in the clean morning light. A friend picked up the boys for an overnight and Bill was traveling, so I had the house to myself. A bath? Shall I have a quiet bath? With bubbles? With candles? And a book? And the book light that I adopted from Will? Ohhh, yes.

Then the top 98% of me looked at the bottom 2% of me and said, “No way I’m getting in the tub with those.”

“Give them a bath before you get in the tub!” Well, that’s ridiculous. You don’t wash before you have a bath! My current parenting line, “Be kind to one another” washed over the negative comment. I ignored the complaints and dropped my dirty feet into the tub, despite the protests from the upper majority.

This was one of those soaking baths. After reading for a half hour, I felt well-rinsed, perhaps even clean. I finished the last few chapters of my book, drenched my hair, and escaped from the tub. When I’m done in the tub, I’m done.

Drying my feet, I noticed dark dirt shadows on all of my toes. Well, I had two choices: scrub them tonight or buy more plants tomorrow morning.

It’s tomorrow morning and the plant store opens in 20 minutes.

Banner photo by Lukas from Pexels