I spent part of my weekend working on the back yard. When we bought our home last summer, both the front and back had been neglected for a long while. What green did cover the ground was a mix between crabgrass and nutsedge. After months of spaying herbicide to kill what was up, watering until new weeds emerged before repeating the process, I was finally down to the last few stubborn weeds.

Not long after I started the two older kids decided that they wanted to help. First came the eldest with his toy shovel asking what I was doing. I explained that the remaining weeds had roots that went deep into the ground and needed to be dug up by hand. He began to help by digging around some of the smaller weeds. Of course, little brother realized there was fun to be had. I couldn’t help but recall all the times I decided to “help” my dad when he was doing yard work and reflected on how he must have felt having to stop work to teach me how to pull weeds correctly or make sure I was doing ok. But those were some of the earliest, and still fondest, memories of doing something with my dad.

I forgot to snap a photo of the full bucket when we finished. But it was a real threat to do something with my older two boys.