Parental approval, still motivating after all these years

M's dad and Elaine are coming to visit next weekend for a round robin of meet-the-folks gatherings at our house. Our fixer-upper, rather "lived in", filled up with work boxes, work-in-progress house. And it's Memorial Day Weekend, so the obvious options for entertaining include... Outdoor Grilling!

In a panicked attempt to get our backyard patio acceptable for parental approval, M and I cleaned the outdoor furniture, swept the patio, knocked down all the weeds between the pavers, researched wasp removal, viciously pruned back the bush beside the kitchen window, stomped a disturbing number of spiders, wielded the weed whacker and collected three black bags of fallen soldiers from the Dandelion Army.

We now have a radius of sanity extending from the backdoor to the edge of the red patio, and maybe another two feet into the yard. Looking beyond this area brings you face to face with the Wyld -- last winter's pruned branches that are still waiting to be taken to green waste, a cockleburr of epic proportions, broad swaths of foxtails, relentless plum suckers, and the stone circle shrouded in weeds. Further around toward the side of the house, the Wisteria is trying to close off access to the side-yard by tipping its garden arch into the walkway.

But the birds are happy. And our fruit trees are alive. And the front yard is starting to look a bit more organized thanks to a mutually beneficial arrangement with one of our elderly neighbors.

Tomorrow we're cleaning and organizing the inside spaces, in hopes that we can go from Chaotic to Acceptable in one weekend. We're a long way from Beautiful or even Organized, but we keep trying. Mostly in fits and starts when people come to visit, or stay, or look critically around our living room.

I had imagined that one year into our house would look a lot different, and that all of these projects would move faster. I suppose all that matters is that we're happy, and that our families visit often enough to spur us into fits of extreme efficiency now and then.