It's so hard to find good help these days...

Well, it's not THAT hard to find good help. Sherry recommended some students she hired from the Odd Job Squad the other day to clear some garden space for her and I ended up hiring two of them to work in my garden this morning for a couple of hours.

I can't remember ever hiring anybody to work for me before. It's a rather strange feeling. Here they were, two people to do my weeding for me. Heh.

Why do I feel so old next to high school students? Oh wait, yeah....never trust anyone over thirty, right?

Dan and Carlin were hard workers but seemed a little shy. Attemps at friendly conversation trailed off after a sentence or two. But they did know how to pull weeds which is the important thing. ( Jeff is reading this over my shoulder and opined that perhaps they just didn't know how to relate to the old lady. He deserved the glare.) They did seem a little terrified at the thought of dead-heading and pruning roses so I let them off the hook there and found them some nice thistles instead.

Anyway, they got that awful hairy corner by the compost looking pretty good, the lower patio was cleared up, and the weed pile that's heading for the compost at the dump grew twice in height, so I don't regret hiring them.

When I am rich, I'll interview potential gardeners carefully and he or she will have to be jolly and chatty as well as unterrified of roses.

Speaking of finding good help, I am absolutely unskilled at wrapping presents. Luckily for me, Jeff is amazingly good at it for our present for Jen's wedding is in a large unwieldy box which required two large sheets of paper.

He approaches gift-wrapping like a military campaign worthy of Martha Stewart. It's all about the details. The box is placed just so and the creases are perfectly straight and even. It's beautiful to watch. Apparently gift-wrapping is not a womanly art exclusively. I'm so glad. Otherwise Jen's present would probably arrive in a large paper sack of some kind. I'm a big fan of gift bags personally, because life's too short to wrestle with wrapping paper. Sigh.

Jeff noticed me studying his method and noted that I was probably envisioning one of the Fab Five doing this. Well, fellas, he's every bit as good at it.