He's a Keeper!

We went to check out our local Farmer's Market this last weekend and were pleasantly surprised to see the great variety that was there. Joe herded Jadyn around to see the different booths while I pushed McKay around in his little red stroller. Joe and I are hoping to set up our own booth in a few weeks, so we wanted to see what products were already being offered. After browsing for a while, I noticed that Joe and Jadyn had disappeared. After scanning the surrounding area for a minute I spotted them over in the playground area across the street. Jadyn was playing on the equipment and Joe was...pulling weeds? I took McKay over to investigate and sure enough my sweet husband was clearing the area of green puncture vines. If you have never come into contact with puncture vines then be sure to count your blessings; These little plants turn into vicious thorns when they dry out in the fall, at which point they are understandably very difficult to handle. Most people choose to rip them out of their yards early in the year while they are still green so as to avoid the painful prickliness. somehow though, this community play area had been neglected and the little green vines were creeping around all of the play equipment and grassy area. Joe spotted the problem and promptly began extricating the plants from the ground and piling them off to one side. He had made significant progress when one of the other daddy's at the park clued in to what Joe was doing and headed over to help. Parents (including myself) stand around watching their kids play all through out the week, and yet Joe was the only one to notice the awful weeds and choose to do something about them. I was so amazed, I think that often times we dismiss problems that aren't easily identified as belonging to us. "The city is in charge of this park. They should clean it up" is probably what most of us were thinking, but since it only took twenty minutes to fix a problem that would become much nastier later, why not step in and serve the community? This incident has yet again affirmed for me that my husband is a keeper.