Landscaping as a Means of Grace

 Landscaping as a Means of Grace

By Bobby Neal Winters

John Wesley would say that God is continually improving us through his grace if we do what He says. James the brother of Jesus said, “Faith without works is dead.” Home Depot says we have that on sale.

Last summer during the lockdown, I became reacquainted with my shovel. The first thing that happened was that our dog Charlie died and I had to dig him a grave.  He was a biggish dog so I had to dig him a biggish/deepish grave, and in doing that I discovered that the shovel was comfortable in my hand.

I topped the grave off with a couple of pavers so that we wouldn’t lose Charlie.  His buddy Obidiah is barking at thin air, so his days are numbered on this earth.  It would be disturbing to find Charlie while burying Obie; therefore we mark his grave.

Pavers, as it turns out, are not all that expensive.  We had a path we continually used across the back yard that was a muddy mess whenever it rained. As a solution to this, I made a nice walkway with weed cloth, sand, pavers, and river pebbles.  (How do I know they were river pebbles? It said it right there on the bag in both English and Spanish.)

It is a thing of beauty, let me tell you.  After having finished that, I decided I wanted a fire pit.  There was a place in my backyard that had been a continual source of problems. These were mainly problems caused by us: We stack rocks there; we stacked brush there; the good folks at the City would occasionally write us nice letters about it.  

We decided to cure that problem by building our firepit there.

Now, I’ve called it a fire pit.  It is actually a tiny patio where I can put a metal contraption that Home Despot calls a fire pit.  Pits are on the ground; barbeque grills are in the air; this is between.

This allowed me to reorder a lot of other landscaping elements to this tiny patio.

And I looked at what I had done and saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were November, so I stopped for the year.  My family complained it was too cold to use the fire pit. How can it be too cold to use a fire pit?  You got fire right there in it.

But now spring has sprung.  There had been an old picnic table in the back yard that Charlie had used like Snoopy’s dog house, but as I mentioned earlier, Charlie is no longer with us.  Obie is too blind and senile to even find a table.  The table itself was broken.  The metal had rusted so as to render it only safe enough to be a dog’s fantasy airplane.

Because of this, I borrowed my youngest daughter’s boyfriend’s angle-grinder, and took it apart, leaving the wood in nice shape.  I didn’t even know how expensive wood was at the time.

I then, using the skills I’d honed to perfection earlier, made a little patio where the table had been.  I am looking for a second hand garden table to put on it.  The folks at Home Despot are mighty proud of theirs.

The yard looks a lot better, and I feel like a better person.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like'' the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube. )