When it is too big to handle,

Our garden is overrun with weeds.

Whenever I visit temples, shrines and even private museums of old Japanese houses,  I feel so guilty for myself not taking good care of our own garden.

If I stayed home all day,   I would have made time to clean up the ground.  Since I have a job,  I make it a rule that I should put a priority to do my chores in a house first.  As a result,  most of the time I end up with indoor chores.   "I just don't have time for our garden."  And what is worse, my husband is away from home  every half a month abroad. He is not here when I really need his help.

Twice a year our gardeners come over to cut and trim all the trees and bushes but that is not enough. Weeds and grasses grow every season and they don't stop  growing  before the gardeners arrive.   Even the gardeners are too busy to spend sitting on the grounds to pick up weeds.  They just cut and trim the trees, sweeping the grounds, loading up all the stuff they cut out  on the trucks and rush to the next job. It still takes several days before they finish our garden.  Its ground is just too big for a housewife to take care of.  Now I am serious about asking a helper from the volunteer gardeners group from the city once a month so that the garden will not turned to be a bush again.

Our house is a typical traditional one.  It has a big garden full of trees around the house.  In the previous generations,  there used to be always someone coming over to clean the ground----but not any more.   Now our old heritage surely takes much time and budget from us  to take care of.  Yet my husband and I never thought  of the idea to abandon  our house and garden.  We like this old house but it is more than old.   Somehow we would like to  preserve it for our next young generation. Some way some how.