Last night at dinner, my dad (who is in town to help us with the yard!) told us about someone he knew who took his wife’s last name when they got married. They did it as a statement to show that the wife doesn’t always have to take the husband’s last name. Hear hear! Not to say I don’t mind being an Ip…it’s just that the husband will never understand what his wife goes through in giving up the name that she’s had all her life. Do I miss being a Lee? You bet. I thought about doing the hyphen thing, but two short names being threaded together looks odd: Lee-Ip. That begs more questions than “Ip” does alone.

I suggested to Matt that we should just come up with our own last name. Since I like green and he likes cars, we should be Mr. and Mrs. Greencar. Then when people say, “Your last name is Greencar? Do you guys have a green car? Har har.” I could respond, “We sure do!!” He wasn’t so thrilled about it. Or if we want to keep our last name sounding Chinese, we could be Mr. and Mrs. Looksik-che (that’s “green car” in Cantonese).

Anyway.

My pop arrived Saturday with the purpose of working on the yard, and will be leaving tomorrow. We are focusing on the area that faces the street, but, unfortunately, is not visible from inside the house. Over the weekend, we worked under the blazing sun, dug up roots and grass, graded the hill to be a more gradual slope, and started planting. During the weekday, my dad had to work on his own, but we tried to help out a little when we got home from work.

Last night, we were digging through a pile of dirt to find rocks for the garden. It was like digging for dinosaur bones or diamonds, slaving away over piles of fine dirt to find small treasures. After we gathered the rocks, we set each one in its proper spot in a sloping pattern along the edge of the garden. As we dropped and lifted the shovels repeatedly, we talked about how it must be to do this sort of labor everyday. In California, you see a lot of immigrants working in yards, carefully trimming bushes, mowing lawns, and weeding. It’s no surprise that Americans don’t want to do this work themselves–it’s time-consuming and tiring (but sure is rewarding when you do it yourself!).

But on the other hand, you’ll find Americans complaining about immigrants coming in and taking “our” jobs. I bet if I asked those same people if they wanted to spend 10 hours a day under the sun doing tough labor in their own yard, they’ll be glad that someone–immigrant or not–is willing to be paid to do that job for them.

Working on our own yard has been rewarding, though, from picking out the plants at the nursery to digging holes. I have some “before” pictures, as well as ones that show progress, and will post them once we completely finish working on that area. It’s been tiring (especially for my dad!), but there’s nothing like looking at your yard, remember how it was before, and knowing that your hands had a part in making it look beautiful.

Now, about that mess in the backyard….