Not a Domestic Goddess

I fear I shall never win an award (or even be nominated) for my domestic skills. I dislike housework, primarily because it has no logical endpoint. You never reach the point where you don't have to do it any more - you may get a reprieve for a few hours, or even a day if you really go all out, but as soon as you eat, or get changed, or finish the paper, there's more housework to be done. Even as you're putting away the last of the freshly laundered clothes, you're wearing something that needs washing (unless you do laundry naked ... that might do the trick). As a dog owner, I know that 30 seconds after I sweep the floor, there will be new hair laid down. And my son can distribute toys 3 times faster than I can clean them up. It all seems so futile.

I like jobs you can finish and not revisit. Or at least forget about for a few months. I love planning and planting my garden every year, but I hate weeding, so my scrap of a front yard is an ongoing exercise in survival of the fittest. Which leads to an eclectic assortment of plants, to say the least. I'm also a terrible softy, so I play host to a lot of straggling, unproductive greenery - I feel guilty about cutting things back after they've flowered, as if I'm being ungrateful for earlier beauty, and any plant that survives the winter can be certain I won't cull it in the summer, no matter how ugly or out of place it is. I have 2 very large and unattractive yucca plants that came with the house. Over the years, they have flourished and divided. I hate them - they're spiky, they attract aphids, and they create a large dead zone in the middle of the garden where they completely block lesser plants from the sun. Every year I threaten to pull them out, but I feel obliged to find new homes for them instead of just hauling them out by the roots and letting them die. Of course nobody I know wants yuccas. They're ugly, they attract aphids ... so they continue to thrive joyously. And I wonder why my garden never looks like the ones in books.