Win Win

This morning I left the house early to get my haircut. When I arrived home I noticed an old car parked in front of my house. Rather than going in the house through the garage I walked up the front steps in my loudest me most forceful way in case I needed to scare some would be robber away. My house keeper was in the house working so I was not worried that anyone had actually broken in.
At my front door I found an old man who had done shown up every other year over the last decade looking for work in my yard. I knew him to be a good worker when he was given a job. I suspect that he lives right on the edge of homelessness, based on the fact that it looks like he might sleep in his car. “Do you have anything that my friend and I can do today?” he asked me when he saw me coming up the path.
Since I have a regular yard guy I don’t usually have much need for outside help, and my first inclination was to say no, but then I thought a minute. My vegetable garden is my domain. My yard guy has nothing to do with it. I had let it go completely wild with weeds this year since I had been away so much of the summer. A couple of weeks ago Russ used the weed wacker just to cut the growth down, but I needed to pull all the weeds out so I could prep the soil for a few fall crops.
“You could pull the weeds in the vegetable garden and till the soil,” I told him, walking him down to the driveway to show him the plot. We negotiated a price and he and his friend went to work.  
“Can I drink from your spigot?” 
“I have no idea what might be growing inside that hose,” I told him. I’ll bring you bottles of water from the house.
The two men worked for almost two hours without a break. When they finished I came outside with the cash to pay him. They had saved me from certain backache if I had tried to do it myself and I told them so. “No ma’am,” the old man told me. “You saved me from hunger today and the rest of the week.”
I asked if I could give him something to eat before they left and he declined. It might be another year or two before he will show up again, but today I was happy he stopped by. I got a terrible job done in my garden and he got to have the dignity of being able to go to the store and pick out his own food.