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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday.  My name is Darrell Darnell, one year for Halloween, I wore a shirt that said, “Get back, witch” and my wife wore one that said, “I’m not a witch, I’m your wife,” and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living.  In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share lessons I learned from the business end of a shovel.

Friday Forum
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What I Learned Yesterday:
You know what I enjoy?  Well, lots of things, really, but to be more specific, I enjoy sitting at a computer and producing podcasts or building websites.  I can easily spend over 12 hours a day doing that stuff and not feel tired.  You know what I don’t enjoy?  Working out in my yard.

As you probably know by now, it was right at a year ago when I left the company I had worked for for 19 years so that I could follow my dream of producing podcasts and building websites full time.  Last year I was focused totally on my business and saw my yard as even more of a nuisance than I normally do.  I kept up with mowing it, but that was all.  Since my wife doesn’t like yardwork either, this meant that our flower beds were totally ignored all year.

We hated not giving them any attention and were really embarrassed by how terrible they looked.  We have two flower beds in our front yard.  One of them contained a big bushy plant that must be the most resilient plant on the earth, and the dead stems of a plant that didn’t have near the staying power of his bedded brethren.  In the other bed was a fire bush that we like because it too won’t die and it turns a really beautiful red hue in the fall.  It was joined by two other bushes that were scrappy, but not really attractive.  They looked malnourished and half dead.  Probably because they were malnourished and half dead.

Both of the neighbors that flank our house have beautiful yards.  One of those neighbors, Allen and Mandy, look like they are going for the yard of the month award…except our neighborhood doesn’t have one of those.  They are incredibly nice people, and besides being pretty similar in age to us, they also happen to like Fringe and some of the other TV shows that we enjoy.

This year Kari and I decided that we would budget some money, and do something with our flower beds.  One day we saw the neighbors next door and asked them for some tips.  Mandy is really the brainchild behind their beautiful yard and she said she would love to go to the gardening store and help us pick out some good plants.  All we needed to do was get our beds ready to plant and then we could schedule a day that worked for all of us.  Deal!

A couple of Friday’s ago Kari and I both had some time to dedicate to preparing the flower beds.  One of the problems with the soil in our area is that it is primarily hard Oklahoma clay.  If the soil isn’t prepared properly, your plants will have a hard time getting their roots to dig into the hard soil.  I determined that we would do our beds right this year and I decided to shovel out about 6” of the clay from both beds and replace it with fresh top soil.  We could then add fertilizer and whatever else was needed to make plant happy dirt.

The first step was to remove the mulch that was there from two seasons ago.  It was now hard, clumpy, and deeply embedded into the clay.  I took a rake and scraped most of it off and then removed any of the remaining plants that we didn’t want to keep.  We only wanted the big bushy resilient plant and the fire bush.  I started shoveling out the clay and almost instantly realized that this was a bad idea.  I knew that I had no way of disposing of the clay easily, but thought I could put some of it in my curbside trash can one week, and the rest of it in there the next week.  No.  It would take several weeks to get rid of all the clay so I needed a new plan.

My mother-in-law is also quite good at gardening so Kari gave her a call.  She said that a good way to break up clay was to add sand to it.  It seemed like a good idea to us, so we went to the garden center and bought some sand specifically designated for flower beds.  It worked beautifully.

It was a lot of hard work to break up the clay chunks and mix in the sand.  I’m sure there is a tiller or some other sort of machine that would have made this process easier, but who needs machines?  After all, it had been a long time since I’d had a good back ache.

It took 2 or 3 hours for me to work the sand into the clay but that wasn’t all that needed to be done to the soil.  I still wanted to work in some fresh topsoil so I repeated the process all over again.  Bit by bit, bag by bag, shovel turn by shovel turn, I worked in the topsoil.  A couple of hours later when I’d finished that part of the process, we finally had flower beds that looked like something that plants might want to call home.  We treated the area with something to help keep that pesky bermuda grass from growing in the beds and we called it a day.

I would like to tell you that it gave me a new perspective on yard work or that I found it rewarding in some way.  I did not.  In all I spent about 6 – 8 hours out there in the dirt and I would have much preferred to have spent that time at my computer.  I tried to use the time to draw insights for this podcast, but found none.

Last Thursday Kari and I went to the plant store with Allen and Mandy.  Allan and I most just chatted while Kari and Mandy picked out plants.  We had fun and found some things that we all liked.  After we picked out our core plants, Mandy recommend that we visit Lowes to buy filler plants since Lowes had them cheaper.  

Friday morning Kari and I went to Lowes and found lots of filler plants and picked up some fresh mulch.  Once we got it all home we carefully placed each plant in the spot that we thought it would have the best place to flourish.  We factored in things like the amount of sun each plant needed, the amount of water that was recommended, how much space each plant required, and colors of surrounding plants.

Once we had all that figured out it was time to start planting.  It was time to see if all my hard work to prepare the soil had paid off.  It was the easiest planting experience I’ve ever had.  The soil was soft and easy to work with.  However, there was still a lot of clay, of course.  As we dug out spots for each plant, we looked for clumps of clay and tossed them out of the bed.  Soon the plants were all in their new spots, covered in a nice blanket of mulch.  The flower beds looked fantastic!  When Mandy and Allen got home, they were impressed with our work!

And now that the job was complete, there were plenty of lessons to glean.

Here’s what I learned.

I think the flower beds can be used as a metaphor for many things.  Perhaps they can be used for a metaphor for a relationship or relationships in our lives.  Perhaps they can be seen as a metaphor for our jobs.  I’ll let you decide how to apply the metaphor.

However, sometimes the flower beds in our lives are ignored for far too long.  They become hard, ugly, filled with weeds and unwanted items.  They have the potential to produce something beautiful, but it’s going to take work.

Not only will it take work, but that work will likely leave us hurting and it will almost certainly not be near the top of our list of things we’d like to be doing.
Sometimes we may not know where to begin or the best steps to take and we need to look for others to guide us to success and to help us achieve what we desire.

Once we’ve taken the time to cultivate the soil, soften what was once hardened and weathered, and taken steps to keep out unwanted weeds, we’re ready to plant anew.

I’m still feeling the pain of all that hard work.  My legs are really sore and I can’t bend over to tie my shoes.  However, I don’t care.  I think I’ve gone outside 4 times today just to look at the flowers.  I’m now invested in the success of those plants and I am committed to their success.  I recognize that it will take a steady stream of attention to help them meet their full potential, but I also know that if I continue to cultivate them, they’ll fill my yard with a beauty that it’s never seen.

I’m Darrell Darnell and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.

If you’ve enjoyed this episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday, I would be grateful if you’d leave a review in iTunes or Stitcher.

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