Nanny multitasks by weeding Huntington Beach park, a role she digs
“Life’s a garden. Dig it.”
So says the lead character, played by David Spade, in the comedy movie “Joe Dirt.”
Maureen Farsadi might agree with that sentiment.
Farsadi, 74, has been doing cleanup at Golden View Park in Huntington Beach three or four times a week for the past several months.
She started visiting the park for other reasons. She’s a nanny for Dylan Bruno, who lives within walking distance of the park, which is adjacent to Golden View Elementary School.
Dylan, 2, enjoys running around at the park and playing with a soccer ball. He yells “green Jeep” whenever one passes by and is constantly seeking the attention of “MoMo,” as he calls Farsadi.
The sandbox contains four swings and four slides. But Farsadi found that it also had invasive goathead plants, which feature thorns she describes as “hard as a rock.”
“The kids were barefoot in here all the time,” Farsadi said. “I started pulling those, and I just kept going. I started doing more and more and more.”
Farsadi, a retired nurse who lives in Corona del Mar, doesn’t get a chance to do much gardening at her apartment complex. A wide open park is more accommodating for her green thumb.
She pulls out weeds that are accumulating in the corner of the sandbox, and uses a broom to get sand off of the hard blue playing surface so that the kids don’t slip.
The tools are actually miniature tools that Bruno’s parents got for him to play with, but Farsadi borrows them for her use.
“I love that his parents bought him these metal ones, so I can use them,” she said with a laugh.
Farsadi, who was widowed in 1995 and never remarried but has three grown daughters, also organizes the sidewalk that surrounds the playing structure. She rips out the fast-growing weeds and levels off the dirt, before transferring it to an adjacent area so that it won’t mix with the sand.
“They already rototilled this, but these weeds are growing back,” Farsadi said. “They go down at least about a foot, the roots do, so we’re just trying to get them all out. We have fun doing it.”
Though the park is nearly vacant for much of an overcast Monday morning, Farsadi and Dylan know many of the other kids who attend the park as well. Christine Amaral, another nanny in the neighborhood who watches two young boys, sees Farsadi hard at work when she comes to the park on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
“She’s incredible,” Amaral said. “She doesn’t even think what she’s doing is that big of a deal. I’m always telling her, ‘How in the world are you 74? How are you on your hands and knees?’ I wouldn’t even be able to get up and she just laughs. She just thinks it’s silly that I think it’s such a big deal.
“The other nannies tease her, [saying] she should go work for the city. She doesn’t belong to any gardening group, nothing. She’s just a very sharp woman.”
On Monday, Farsadi linked up with her friend and fellow nanny Maria Salazar, an Anaheim resident. Salazar was at Golden View Park watching a 6-year-old named Henry.
Salazar said she also helps the effort sometimes by picking up trash.
“It’s a nice park,” Salazar said. “We enjoy it … I think [Farsadi] does a nice job. We tell her, ‘Oh my God, you do a lot of work doing this.’”
Farsadi doesn’t mind.
She’s digging her new role. After she finished her task Monday, she took Dylan in his stroller back to his home on Gibson Circle, saying hello to various people along the way.
“I love this,” she said. “I can just get out here and play in the dirt.”
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