Since my mother-in-law died 10 years ago, I have been somewhat tending her widow's garden. I've inherited sandy soil near the beach, an asbestos pond, blaring sunshine and a totally inactive father-in-law, who won't even water the hydrangeas. 
Somehow something keep on growing. The roses love it, some geraniums I put in thrive. This amazing double pink poppy takes over every summer like Little Shop of Horrors, that my late mother-in-law took as seeds from me. My poppy died, hers multiplied. 
Now that he's 85, I keep thinking each season is the last season, so I put less and less effort into things. I wanted to remove the asbestos pond that they'd put in during the 1960's, but he got all whiney about it. I wanted to remove the dead Japanese cherry tree, but everything thinks it's too much work for nothing. I need to cut back a ton of yellow flag irises that are choking the pond, but I can't do it on my own.
But today I could dig out some weeds. I can't find the name, but they have broad roundish leaves with white hairs and make small intense blue flowers. They popped up all over the place, like nettles, and I dug deep to get the tubers out as much as possible. Now I have a rash from the hairs. 
And when I dug, I found earthworms!!!
My teenaged nieces think I am insane - they were along with us visint grandpa - but I colllected about 20 worms in a pot of dirt and covered them with leaves and stored them on my niece's pack porch overnight, as we slept over to babysit.
They learned a lot about compost from that experience! And now my beach yard words have a new home on an Amsterdam balcony, slowly digesting street leaves that I hope will feed my plants in the springtime.