Hold That Light High

I love landscaping, even though it looks like the place is in desperate need of a landscaper. It's like the Old McDonald song of gardening around here. Here a garden, there a garden, everywhere a garden, garden... But I love them all, and they make me happy, so it's not a bad thing. At least not until I need to weed. Or add lighting.

That lighting thing started innocently enough. I wanted lights along our front sidewalk so that guests could see before they got in range of the porch light. That's not too much to ask. So we bought and installed lights, and they were spendy enough, and shockingly chintzy. We hated those things from Day 1. And then they started malfunctioning, and we hated them more. Eventually, we just ripped them from the ground. Literally. Some of the wires are still there, buried deeply, and we don't care. There is no electrical current running through them, so it's all good.

But we needed more lights. That's when we realized that solar was so much cheaper, and they gave off as much light as the incompetent electric ones we had anyway. It was a win all around. But things didn't stop there. I added solar lights all around the house. And put some in the gardens behind the patio. And along the driveway at the yard. And in the big garden by the clothesline. And then I felt bad for the shrub garden that didn't have any at all.

The place is lit up like the 4th of July around here after the sun sets. If the solar lights actually gave off any kind of illumination, we'd look like a football stadium. But while I've gotten pretty creative in my use for my (way too many) solar lights, it's Micah who is most genius at using them. I caught him several times this summer running through the yard with one held high, like he was Indiana Jones carrying a flaming torch. Minus the flames, of course.

I'd call it rather ingenius, myself. But now we have all sorts of lights lying around and I have no idea where they came from. Micah pulls the light out of the ground, leaving the stake behind. Re-using a solar light without a stake takes as much creativity as Micah has, and he has me beat.