“I’ll tell you what’s on my list,” Dad announced.  (1) He wanted to mix a few tablespoons of cement to fill the cracks where mortar had fallen out of the brick mailbox pedestal when it capsized.  (2) He wanted to trim new growth from the juniper hedge where the twenty-foot-tall trees, covered in powder-blue berries, had begun to infringe on the public sidewalk.  (3) He wanted to hoe the remaining weeds out of the flower garden—the deep-rooted entwining morning glory grows a foot a day.  (4) He wanted to clean the sidewalks of dust and sticks and leaves with his two-stroke blower.  “I’m not saying these jobs are for you,” he insisted.  “I’m just telling you my job list for myself.”  Of course, I knew his body would balk at these jobs, except maybe the mortar.  With a free hour, I went to work with the DeWalt hedge trimmer and carefully, slowly, carved a clean new vertical line against the sidewalk edge, taking care not to leave bulges and not to carve out concave curves.  My critical eye searched out and eliminated defects Dad might detect.  The aromatic trimmings filled a thirty-gallon garbage can.  A smiling walker came along just as I finished the job, and she thanked me.  Then the hoeing and weeding and sweeping and blowing.  Dad, meanwhile, set to on the mortar.  An overturned garbage can served as a stable palette for mixing mortar, a camp chair his painter’s seat, and the grass his paint box with the tools and ingredients arranged.  He mixed and scraped and mortared and rubbed, perfectly able and happy to do the job, and I did not hover, though I admit to watching from my upstairs office, writing.  The new mailbox is in, though Burke had to cut off the back, remove a two-inch ring, then reattach the two pieces of the box with duct tape to insert into the hole.  The old capstone is sledged to pieces and in the city garbage cans, and the new stone installed.  Dad finished the job and sat long in the sun, slathered with SP100, gathering strength for the great labor of standing up from a chair.  I checked the hedge again today just to make sure it was still straight, and exhaled my relief.  In the flower bed, three little ice plants had surfaced, having survived last month’s ice plant purge.  These I transplanted to two orange crocks, where they immediately set to blooming, and I cannot wait until they spread and overtop the rims and cast their bright blooms to the sun.  The blooms begin close as the sun begins to set and the sky dusks.  Excuse me for a moment: I can see Dad needs my help getting up from his chair at the curb.

Dad filling chinks with fresh cement.

Rescued ice plants that make me very happy.