Jesus once said to his mates, “I assure you, even if you had faith as small as a mustard seed you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible.”
My faith must be lacking today, because I can’t seem to move some small tree stumps into a large blue bin.
In our suburb, we can order 3 large blue bins or skips each year to get rid of unwanted household items and garden refuse. There’s a bit of a waiting list on them, so even though Pauline ordered one weeks ago, it’s only just turned up this week. You never know exactly when they’ll turn up. The best indication that you have one for the weekend is that there is usually a large blue bin in your front yard when you get home that wasn’t there previously.
Unfortunately this happens to be the week that we’ve been laid low by some kind of nasty virus. I can assure you that my on-air shift yesterday was a struggle. I had almost lost my voice and I have been told by a few people who were tuned in how shocking it sounded. I take this as a good sign. It seems to me that if they tell me how bad I sounded on a day like that, they must feel that I do a reasonable job the rest of the time. Otherwise they would regularly report how bad I sound. Small comfort I know but you’ve got to hang onto something.
Back to the big blue bin. We ordered it because last time we had one we filled it up to the brim with lots of bits and pieces including pruned branches and lots of small shrubs and trees which had succumbed to the Olsen gardening curse. They were dead. They had ceased to be.
While we managed to get all the crispy brown foliage into the bin, there is still a selection of little stumps in the ground with their attached root balls. They would normally take me about 10 minutes each to pull them out and dump them, but the way I’m feeling, they’re staying in the ground for the time being. The most energetic thing I’ve done all day is to walk outside to collect the newspaper. I needed a darn good rest after that.
So the result of all of this is that come Monday morning, the men in the big blue truck will come and collect a mostly empty big blue bin. I guess we’ll just have to order another one and hope it comes at a more convenient time.
In the meantime, if you want to give your faith a workout, try telling the stumps to move themselves into the bin. I’ll let you know if I see any plant remains shooting past my window on their way to the big blue bin.
Posted by Rodney Olsen
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um, Rodney,
when you start hallucinating like that it’s a good sign that you’re supposed to hop back under the doona and not surface for a few days 🙂
As soon as the stumps stop flying through the air, you’re right to go back to work – deal?
ps: thanx for sharing your story of misery in a humorous way
Hey, Rodney! Sorry it took me so long to get over here. This is really funny, and oh so familiar! When we moved into our house five years ago I inherited a flower bed overgrown with nasty dead bushes. I cut and dug and heaved and, well, most of them are still there. Sigh.
Imagine having that level of faith, where you can truly say to that tree stump “be moved from here into the blue skip over yonder” and it happens!!! 😀
Well, finally, I think I’ve solved the mystery as to where this rather strange shrub showed up outside my window the other day. I was eating my morning breakfast as usual, and when I looked out the window, there it was just as dry, and shriveled as could be. It was so pathetic that not even the birds would land on it. And so not knowing what else to do, I watered it hoping that it would bush again. But to no avail for afterall it was just a lowly dry shrub. And so I tossed it into the big green bin that we have for our trash here at our apartment complex. The next day, it was taken away in the big green garbage truck to more fertile ground where maybe it just might be able to revive itself. Anyway, stumbled on your site by browsing and enjoyed your postings.
Scot
The good news was that we told our next door neighbour that we wouldn’t be able to use the bin and within a very short time they had filled it with their rubbish. I was glad that it didn’t go to waste.
We might throw a few things into their bin next time they order one. 🙂