Projects Not The Same Without A Wife

It was Memorial Day weekend.

Sitting on my patio sipping coffee, smoking a cigar and watching the day come alive, I was mulling over my options for the three-day weekend.

Going fishing was an option. I had been fishing the week before, but it’s hard to overdo fishing. Taking a motorcycle trip was another good option. Another activity that’s hard to overdo. Or I could zone out on TV sports.

Lots of good sports stuff was on the tube over the Memorial Day weekend - baseball games, the Indy 500 and the NBA playoffs, not to mention beach vollyball, nine-ball tournaments and all those absorbing aerobic workout programs.

Then I wondered what I would be doing if I were still married. Having been an occasional member of that institution, I was sure that my weekend as a married man would have been planned weeks in advance.

Just in case our plans did not include socializing or leaving the house, I had little doubt that I would be involved in one of the “honey-do” projects wives keep handy for husbands. Honey, do this. Honey, do that.

All the “honey-do” projects I remember were worthwhile, which is what makes them so frustrating.

Of course, the porch steps need to be repaired. Someone could break a leg. We could get sued.

Of course, the trellis needs work. It’s falling apart, and it looks tacky. And so on.

For the heck of it, I tried to figure out what honey-do project I would be doing if I were still married.

Right in front of me was a 40-foot gap in the big green bushes that stretch along one side of the back yard. Bushes used to form a solid line on that side of the yard until a hard freeze left the 40-foot stretch of apparently dead bushes.

For the past six years I have been waiting for the dead-appearing bushes to spring back to life. It was possible, I told myself, that the bushes were simply shocked into a dormant state and would someday be shamed back to life by their shiny green companions.

I might fool myself with that self-delusional logic, but I would never fool a wife. The bushes were dead.

That 40-foot gap would certainly be a top honey-do priority. So, for the sake of the good old days, I decided to do as I was told by my imaginary, composite wife. I would fix the 40-foot gap.

Until I figured out how to match the bushes, I decided to first remove the dead bushes and plant flowers in the space. It would look nice for the first time in six years and be a first step toward replacing the bushes.

At the nursery, I bought several hundred pounds of enriched dirt and enough flowers and plants to fill the 40-foot gap in the bushes. I didn’t realize flowers cost so much. But that was the easy part.

Pickaxes and crowbars were required to dig out roots and rocks. It took hours to turn over the dirt with a shovel in the 40-foot by 3-foot stretch that originally appeared so small.

Then the turned dirt had to be hoed to remove all the clods before the enriched soil could be added, which had to be raked and smoothed before the hands-and-knees flower planting process could begin.

By the time I finished, I was so sore and exhausted that I could barely shuffle into the house. After a shower, I was too tired to fix dinner. I drank milk, ate half a cantaloupe and went to bed.

The next morning, I went out to look at my handiwork and water 40 feet of newly planted flowers. I had to admit that this was another worthwhile honey-do project, albeit from an imaginary, composite wife.

Honey-do projects aren’t the same, however, unless there is a real wife standing there after you’ve finished to admire your handiwork and tell you what a good job you did.

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