Professional Gardener

Since I was gone and or busy most of Spring break, I was unable to meet up with Kate and Britney and work with the LaRiviere's. Instead, I found a different opportunity to do some community service with a few of my friends. I was asked if I wanted to help a small group of people go do some yard work for some older people that lived at the Niles Canyon Mobile Estates. It is a community of mobile homes and the majority of the home owners older than 50. I do not know how my friend's mom, Kathy, was informed about this, but her daughter Kelia was the one who asked me if I would be available. So, we would be helping four homes/people with yard work because they are unable to do it themselves. We arrived at around 8:45 in the morning on Saturday and then left around 2:00 in the afternoon. At each house we mainly pulled weeds out of the grass, dirt, rock, etc. It didn't seem like it was going to be too much work, but after a few hours in the sun it became pretty tough work. At the first house we had filled three and half garbage full of weeds and I was amazed that we had pulled that many. I was glad that I went with some hard working people, because from past experiences I have witnessed how easy it is for people to slack off when they are doing service work. None of us complained and we were doing really good. Unfortunately I think we spent too much time at the first two homes because we started to run out of time at the last two. To make matters worse, the final two homes contained the most weeds(go figure). As a result we had to go on overdrive and we got as much weeds out as possible instead of trying to be meticulous and getting every one that we could find. At one of the homes, we were working when one the neighbors came out of their home and asked us, “How much do you guys charge?”
Kathy then told her, “Oh, we're not doing this for money. Rather, we're just trying to give back to our community by doing some yard work for the elderly.”
“Wow that is very nice of you, and you're all doing a very good job too.”
It felt really good that we were appreciated, not only by the people who lived where we were weeding, but also that the neighbors noticed too. I think that when we all heard what the woman had said it gave us more drive to do a good job. At the end of the day I asked Kathy if she could provide me with a quote and she told me:
“It is awesome to have a group of hard working young men and women volunteer in order to help those in need. Though many do not know it, there are always opportunities for you to help your community. Never forget that the little things sometimes make the biggest impact in someone else's life.”