Hiring help: the importance of being a blogger...

Last week I realized that I needed more gardening help, as my regular gal is taking some time off this spring and summer. But I never know if I can find anybody because I can't offer a full-time summer job.

Since I'm an internet addict, I bypassed the usual newspaper classified route and tried my local Craigslist. Early in the week, I hired a young fellow, who lasted just long enough to do some overdue weed-whacking and edging before he found a summer job more to his liking.

But then I struck gold: a mature university student who wanted exactly what I had to offer, gardening and flexible part-time. And best of all, she has a full summer of landscape maintenance experience under her belt (working for the city last year), and she has a friend who also wants a few hours of gardening work each week over the spring and early summer.

I'm thrilled because at this time of the year, it takes everything just to clean up and keep up with the mowing and weeding. There's actually precious little energy left for a life (my desk is a mess and the laundry keeps piling up), not to mention doing any real gardening: making changes and refining plantings, or doing up really nice containers. (Did I mention that we have bitten off more than we can chew?)

Now with more help, we can actually redo parts of a border that's gone too wild and get those extra large clumps of daffodils dug up and divided - all those jobs that I think, "It would be nice if we could..." So welcome Laura and Sarah: I think we're going to have fun.

PS: Laura said that she felt good about the job when she discovered that I was a blogger too...