leaf me speechless

So what else happened yesterday? Well we have this friend of my mom's family in town. Doffie's kids are much older than ours and I have to admit I can count on one hand the number of times we have made contact with her through 15 years in Medfield. But now is the time to come together, yes? Of course. So she emails one day to say she'd rather not cook, and it looks like we have plenty of help on that front anyway (too true) so can she come do our laundry?

Hmm well we had just finished a load so that wasn't an immediate need, but as I looked out our window at the still-uncleared-from-last-year garden we have out back, I realized this was one area which might very well not make it up far enough on the list, even though it explodes in the spring and summer and can be a great source of joy for us even while just doing the dishes and looking out the window. So does Doffie do gardening? You bet! And she'll bring a friend!

Now Becca's theory is that you have your gardening people and your cooking people. Some people like to cook but they dislike gardening, and some people like to garden but they dislike cooking. Sure there are people who are good at both, but you rarely meet someone who is equally happy on the knees and stirring the peas, ya know? In the soil and bringing a boil? Digging a hole and frying some sole? Somebody stop me! Anyway. We're in the cook-not-garden category, so we need need someone like Doffie.

She comes over one afternoon to survey The Job, and comments that we could probably use a little raking, too, to which I laughed and said well you can do whatever you want. I laughed because, see, comparing clearing the garden to raking the fairly prodigious amount of leaves we never got to last fall is like comparing a creek to Niagra Falls... totally different scale, and certainly not something we would ask anyone to tackle without paying them large amounts of money.

So let's say you wanted to do a massive raking job for free. Where would you go? How can you get tons of energy to just let loose on a problem? I know what you're thinking. Sammy. And maybe a couple of his friends. Well, yeah, you could probably go off-grid and power the house yourself if you put Sammy on a treadmill for a few hours, but raking? I don't think so. He loses interest fast. Ok so now let's say you have a son in high school. Let's say he's on the varsity lacrosse team. Hmmm. How many players on a Lacrosse team again?

You think this is an April Fool's joke a day late, right? Well take a look at THIS! That's right. 21 members of the Medfield High School Varsity Lacrosse team descended. With rakes. For one hour.

Done.

I gotta say, that was a pretty amazing spectacle. This will really make a huge difference this spring and summer and we can't thank you enough Doffie, Steve, Galen, and Medfield LAX!