  I just weeded-- real weeding-- for the first time. Growing up in suburbia with parents who aren't into flower beds, I guess the opportunity never arose. I now live in an apartment complex, but outside my door, underneath my front window, I have a little strip of dirt. The girl who lived here before me had planted annuals, so when I moved in last August I enjoyed those flowers until they turned into earth. Ice and frost came with winter, and my strip kept itself free from any choking weeds or life at all; in Spring I was surprised by the daffodills that bloomed on their own, but who were soon mangled in a wind storm. But since then it's just been me and my strip, and the weeds. Every few days I would pull a few, which kept the strip looking decent, but during my recent hiatus at my parents' house, the wild green took over. I half thought about pulling them all out yesterday, when I returned to the apartment, but quickly dismissed that idea.
Then today, just now, I went on a walk and something inside of me snapped. Maybe it was peering at everybody else's dirt strips-- theirs decked out with flowers of all varieties which I couldn't name-- that forced my decision. I looked at my strip and decided it was time. I patiently weeded. Every so often I peered up at two young Mormons, donned in dress shirts and ties, trying to talk to a neighbor who was playing catch with his son.
I've seen them over there before. The weeding was hard work, but I had the strip looking maintained in only a half hour or so. As I attempted to pick the muck out from underneath my fingernails, I said a prayer for the two dressed-up guys and another for my neighbors down the street, and vowed to buy mums this fall and display them outside in some way. 
