I dug up a boxwood bush in the front garden today. I got back from my walk, and mom was already out there with a shovel and a spade in the bucket and some gloves, and she said she needed some help.

I started driving the spade into the dirt and pushing in farther with my shoe. But I realized it wasn’t going to be easy because there’s so much rock around. I would drive the spade in and the metal spear hit the rock and it would spark. So I had to get down on my hands and knees with a smaller spade and shuffle away the dirt and the rock to create space in the soil where the bigger shovel could really drive through. I built the moat around the bush. And then I really started driving in and leveraging up, and I heard the roots snapping underneath and the soil. Finally I got it where I could grab a hold of the bottom of the branches, and pull it out and break the rest of the roots manually. I took it out by the curb. Mom said one of her friends, is going to come by to pick it up later. Then she had me dig up another one of the flowering plants and put it in the place of the boxwood bush.

I was sweating from my forehead. Once I was done. I don’t usually stuff my forehead, even though I work out pretty much every day. There’s something different about yard work. It’s different than exercising your whole body is engaged and you have a goal so you’re only thinking about the goal, you’re not thinking about how your body aches. And so I think you ended up working harder without even thinking about it. It was nice to work my body like that, a nice break from working so hard mentally just standing still at my desk just staring at the screen trying to solve a problem with my mind and my body being no help at all. Except for to keep in the same position and keep staring at the screen. I should go and ask my mom she has any more bushes for me to dig up.