My Meeting With A Millennial

The internet went down in the big storm on the coast last night, and along with it, in the sweeping, driving rains that pelted our yard, down went the peonies, the stately black iris just making their debut, the taller branches of some of the rose bushes heavily laden with masses of blooms, the large open white poppies with the black centers, oh, all manner of things, which I have inspected from the window, but decline to visit closely, since it will be a mess, and it is one of those moments when I would prefer to pour concrete over the entire area and go for bits of sculpture thither and yon, indestructible (of course, I would have to design and make it).  But now the internet is back up and here it the blog I had made for today, my verbal sculpture, as it were.  ****
My husband chanced to see a yard crew working next door and called across to establish a protocol for dealing with the climbing hydrangea which covers a fence dividing the two lots.  In talking with the foreman he suddenly thought to ask him to come by to consider taking on our place and quote some rates to us.  Last evening he arrived in his shiny black pickup truck.  He was a young fellow, how young we did not immediately grasp, tall, handsome, commanding.  Unlike so many young persons today, he looked each of us directly in the eye as he firmly shook hands, standing comfortably, casually, but commandingly before us.  He walked with Richard through the various shrubbery and garden beds, me trailing along behind, and they talked garden needs, fees for doing this or that, estimations of frequency, the whole lot, in which the young man kept up a firm overview of what was the issue at each juncture of their observations of the manifold aspects of keeping our grounds and garden in trim.  Then I, who wanted to gauge him myself as a person who would deal with the flower beds as I would want it, spent a few minutes pointing out the major weeds, all of which he knew by sight, which would be what I wanted him and his crew to handle, leaving alone the great variety of other growing things, since I do not like to worry whether flowering plants will be correctly identified or pulled as possible weeds.  He understood exactly what my concerns were and reassured me that they much preferred the less is more approach whilst weeding amongst flowers.  We agreed to take his crew on in the framework of the estimated costs of various activities, weeding, hedge trimming, mowing, etc etc, when he had indicated that they would not do their tasks routinely but only when the various growing things needed tending, which means of course weeding all the times, privet hedge trimming once a month perhaps, showing an admirable understanding of the nature of his work and the needs of his clients.  As we were considering a first date for his crew he remarked that the following weekend he would be busy with his brother’s college graduation celebrations, and we casually asked him when he had graduated college, only to have him reply that he was just entering his senior year at the local town high school.  We were amazed at his maturity, his gentlemanly behavior, his social skills, and even more so when he explained that he had started his gardening work three years earlier and was pleased that it grew enough that he could bring in friends and have a real “business.”  Well, then if he is seventeen, he must have been born at the close of the twentieth century, so he is one of those celebrated Millennials or Generation Y.  All I can say is “What’s not to like?”