Landscaper Carson

Today we had a knock on the door and found Landscaper Carson peddling his services.
Since the economic times have put a financial burden upon the country, and his labor cost was so cheap, we were able to accommodate his pleas for employment. Sara quickly and skillfully negotiated a price for some odd jobs in the yard and set Carson to work. At the time I was slaving over a hot Dutch oven so as to provide adequate nourishment for my poor, starving family. (Last Thursday,our stove had a loose connection in the back and two wires arched and blew the power to the whole house. The stove no longer works. A story Sara can relate later.)

Anyways, back to Landscaper Carson. As he commenced his contracted work, he was very motivated and soon had cleaned all the little pesky grass starts that had crept into the front planter beds. I was impressed. Thinking that we had landed a great deal, we soon contracted for Landscaper Carson to water out newly planted, and oh-so-tender garden. Again, he completed the job with just a little coaxing. It was a warm day and he had been busy working hard, so I offered him a drink of water and a slight reprise from his vigorous labors. I think at this point he had struck up a conversation with Sara in which he stated, "Hi, I'm Landscaper Carson. My phone number is BYOB-EFG." I am not sure what EFG stands for, but it could be "environmentally friendly gardening."

After his break, Carson started working on pulling the grass out of the back planter bed, which I had clumsily over seeded while planting the yard. By all appearances he was the genuine article. He had even shown up with a John Deere Gator to help expedite the process. At this point, Jonas had come outside and was helping me with the Dutch oven meal. Being a two year old, Jonas is easily distracted and while I was sampling the stew, Jonas wandered off to where Carson was working with his Gator. A few minutes later, I had Carson come over to me and ask, "Hey Mister, could you please get your kid off my Gator?"
From that point on the working relationship went downhill. I'm not sure if it was Jonas getting in his way, or the incessant heat of the day, but this landscaper became useless. He kept wandering off. I even found him inside alone talking with Sara. Then Landscaper Carson gave a different phone number for his business. I began to think he might be one of those fly-by-night operations. After I had shown him back out of my house to where he was working, he asked if there was any other task he could perform around my property. I'm willing to give people a second chance and so I informed him that the wind had blown some garbage onto my yard and he could double his earnings for the day by cleaning it up. Carson looked at the garbage, then looked at me, and informed me that he wasn't in that line of work, but could give me the number to a garbage man that he knew. I declined the offer.

At this point, my meal was ready and so I went into the house to eat with my family. In walks Landscaper Carson ready for a meal and his payment as well. We took pity on the poor, tired landscaper and gave him a free meal for his services. Eating my amazing beef stew must have drained any ambition he had left out of him. After dinner, he decided he was going to abandon his business opportunity and go downstairs to play in the toy room. All of this has left me wondering if he will come back tomorrow looking for more work. After all, he did earn a whopping 50 cents today, which he declared is going to help him buy a toy at the store.