By Debra DuPree Williams @DDuPreeWilliams
Today my husband
and I tackled a chore that we had completed a couple of days earlier. Yes, you
read that correctly. We had finished this job earlier in the week. Yet, here we
were redoing it. Why? You may ask. Well, we didn’t have a plan. Do you know the
quote, "A goal without a plan is just a wish?”
How I wish we had made a plan.
It’s amazing how
one little four letter word can make such a huge difference. If we had had a
plan to begin with, we could have simply sat back and enjoyed the fruits of our
labor. Instead, we found ourselves working at least as hard as if not harder than
we had the first time.
We moved into our
condo about eighteen months ago. We knew that our backyard needed to be
revamped but we decided to wait until we came up full time to tackle that job.
Life with an HOA
We live in a golf
community on one of the fairways. It’s a beautiful place, but the HOA has control
over what we can and cannot do within our yards, both front and rear. As long
as we don’t increase the footprint, we are fairly safe. But we were waiting for
the said HOA to do some work in both our front and rear yards. We asked if we could just tackle the project of replanting
our front and rear gardens ourselves. They gave us a thumbs up.
We hired a
lovely young lady and her crew to tear out and put in new plantings. The front
turned out beautifully, so we asked if she’d help with the rear yard, too. We
talked about the look we wanted, and we met at the nursery and picked out new
plants. Beautiful new hydrangeas and azaleas were added to our landscape.
Golfers stopped and commented on what an improvement we had made.
All was well
until today when the mowers came to cut the grass. In our excitement over all
the new plants and the new mulch and the beautiful day lilies that would bloom
next year, we forgot all about the need for the mowers to go through our yard
to access parts of the common areas that must be maintained. How did that
happen?
No Plan
Simple. We didn’t
have a plan. Well, not a real plan drawn up and showing the locations of all
the plants we would put in. Some were placed too far into the path the mowers
needed to take. Others would have been mown down, period. We called the
president of the HOA and had him come look at our dilemma and then hubby and I
set about remedying the situation.
So today, we dug up
rhododendrons and azaleas, pachysandra, and daylilies and moved them out of
harm’s way, and for sure, out of the path the mowers normally take. It was a lot
of hard work for two people of a certain age. We didn’t have the young lady
do this as she is working a huge job in another neighborhood this week. The fix
fell to us. After all, we should have taken every little detail into
consideration, and we did not.
All that work
because we failed to do the one thing that could have prevented it. We didn’t
make a plan. We just had an idea and we thought it would work out okay. If we had
only asked to see a drawn-up plan, or even if we had taken the time to draw a
crude rendition of what we wanted, we would have seen the obstacle course we
were creating.
God Makes Plans
Even God tells us
He knows the plans He has for us. Jeremiah 29:11 is one of my favorite verses
in all of the Bible. I quote it to my children with frequency. Yet, I didn’t
stop and heed what I knew to do. And man, are we tired tonight.
Before we began the
work today, the first thing we did was stop and ask God for wisdom and
discernment about how to repair the mess we had created. Most of the work that
was done by our young lady and her crew remained. We did move four bushes, one
pachysandra, and all those daylilies (they numbered somewhere around 70). When
the mowers come next Wednesday, they will be able to do their job. And we will finally
get to sit back and enjoy the fruits of our and our landscaper’s labor.
Do you always
make a plan? Did you find yourself in a fix when you failed to make one? Share
your experience with us.
TWEETABLE
I believe it was Shakespeare who said, "Best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray." At least, that's what my Mom always said.
ReplyDeleteThere's where I usually land: plans made which don't work out. My typical response is, "Uh-oh!"
Glad to hear things will eventually work out! 🙂