52 Blessings - Week 12
To be quite honest, this morning I woke up and couldn’t think of much to be grateful for. My muscles were sore and stiff from yesterday’s work shovelling pine bark into buckets, carting them up the driveway and up the back slope to the new garden bed. It was hard, repetitive work made worse by the midday sun and worse still by the intermittent heavy showers that would pass over. Mind you, only for long enough that the road was soon steaming in the sun that followed. I was cursing myself for the block that our house is built on…..cursing the builder for raising the level of the block….cursing the builder again for not having adequate side clearance along the side of the house so we could have the trailer in the backyard. All in all, I felt a little over it.
But this afternoon, after planting in our newly acquired grevilleas, I felt a real sense of achievement. The weeds are pretty much gone, we have a lovely new garden bed and we have done it without the aid of professionals. I’m sure that a professional landscaping could have done a better job….but there is a certain element of satisfaction gained from doing hard work yourself. I guess I’m just grateful I do have the ability to do hard work….so many others would love to be able to and cannot. It’s like my Dad used to say, be thankful for the aches and pains you feel when you are able-bodied - it means you are alive. 
(Don’t ask me what that white spot is - I don’t have the foggiest!)