Growin' Up Gregory

I remember as a child my dad having me get outside on the weekends or when we weren't in school to help on projects around the house.  It may have been working on fences, something to do with the pool, or fixing one of the many broken pieces of equipment that he's owned over the years.  My part was typically just the simple stuff, following his directions step by step while we worked on that day's project.  And I honestly never realized the thought and planning that went into some of these seemingly small tasks at the time. But this weekend, we finally began doing some of the more serious landscaping at our new (1 year old) house.  Before we could start the actual work, Britt and I had to decide where flower beds were going to be, where the walkway would be, which bushes and flowers to buy, what kinds of stones, etc.  There were a ton of decisions to make before we ever even got dirty. Next came the calculating and buying step.  We had to figure out how...

Garden Tools After getting seeds planted in our garden a few days ago, we are now patiently waiting for those first little specs of green to start popping through the soil.  Unfortunately, right behind those first good plants typically come unwelcome visitors in the form of weeds.  Grass and other weeds can be a pest and take away vital nutrients that our veggies need to flourish.  But there's a solution - a well trained gardener, or even a young child with a minimal instruction, can actually use a tool, a garden hoe, to eliminate the weeds with a few swift swings.  Their skill and desire  to improve the garden make the soil cleaner and the plants are allowed to grow stronger and flourish.  But the opposite is also true.  If someone was to become angry at you, they could sneak into the garden at night and use that same hoe to destroy all of your precious veggies.  You see, the garden hoe is merely a tool in the matter, completely neutral and at...