Helper extraordinaire

Copyright by Maureen Shaughnessy

Jack is in Helena for a few days and while visiting, he wanted to earn $$ to continue on his bike trip. Since my clients who might have hired him are all out of town, I hired him to help me in my garden. Specifically, to remove the 1500 square feet of black plastic (yes, plastic) that has been covering our front garden for the last 9 months (in a last ditch attempt to kill the weeds) ... fold it up and pull the few straggling weeds that managed to survive total darkness and dry soil all that time.

Jack is also helping me upgrade my garden pond, which has intermittently leaked since it was installed. I have decided to line the pond with concrete and pea gravel over the rubber liner, both for practical and aesthetic reasons.

I was thinking last night about that pond -- about the motley assortment of helpers I've had working on it. First, our son, Mickey, dug the original hole bigger on one of his visits home, then left to go back to university leaving me with .... ummmm ... a bigger hole. Then, my youngest son, Gabe helped me make the hole bigger and better shaped. Next I lined it with a pond liner. Then, not liking how I had the rocks and waterfall, I hired Gabe's friend, Clancy Williams, to reconstruct the pond enlarging it again, and adding huge slabs of slate around the edges. In the course of installing the slate, we might have poked a hole in the rubber liner and ever since, the pond has leaked. Or not leaked. I can never figure out why it stops leaking, nor can I find the damn hole in the liner! Very frustrating!

So, a week ago my poor little pond was only about a quarter full of stagnant smelly water, decaying worms and beetles and a few very unfortunate goldfish I couldn't catch last fall when the water started to freeze. Oh yeah-- mustn't forget to mention the mosquito larvae. They were starting to worry me.

So that brings me to Jack -- who has kindly cleaned out the smelly water, cleaned the liner, removed all the stone and prepared the pond to be improved with the addition of concrete and pea gravel.

Now it's raining (bless the rain -- we really really need the moisture in Montana!) and work on the pond has come to a screeching halt. It's way too muddy to be digging out there.

Jack is leaving in a few days. If it doesn't stop raining soon, I will be left with a half-finished pond yet again. Big sigh.

Oh well. That gives me an excuse to hire some of Mickey and Gabe's other friends to help finish it. Hmmm, Brent? Kyle? Andy? Matt? Are you guys going to be in Helena any time soon? Want a little paying work? ;-D