dianaschnuth

Our next-door neighbor just freaked my shit out. I could have sworn I heard someone call a hello through the open door upstairs, and then I heard the chain-link fence rattling. Was someone in our back yard?

I went upstairs to the living room, closed the front door, and started peering out all the windows to try to see what I’d heard. Finally, looking out our upstairs bedroom window, I saw movement: branches of the overgrown bush that’s beginning to encroach onto our property from our neighbors’. I figured it had to be the neighbors doing some yardwork, but I had to be sure.

I put on socks and sandals (I know, I know) and headed out the back door. Sure enough, once I got into the middle of the yard, I could see him out there in his own side yard, with a tree pruner plunged into the middle of this straggly bush, cutting away. Of course, he saw me, so I had to say hello and make small talk: stupid shit like, “Decided to chop down that bush, huh? I heard noises out here and wondered what was going on…” and so forth.

Keep in mind, we’ve never introduced ourselves to our neighbors in the year-plus that we’ve lived here, so he was understandably perplexed to see me. He also wasn’t in the mood to talk—he was in the mood to kick the shit out of that bush. So, I wished him good luck and went back inside.

Nobody scoping out our backyard in broad daylight. Just the neighbor getting rid of the bush Aaron had been complaining about a couple weeks back. 🙂

As Amy had to cancel our weekend of girlie giggles due to Grandma’s gallstones, Aaron and I opted to make use of the weekend to take care of some much-needed home improvement projects. More maintenance than improvement, actually.

First on the list: fertilize the lawn. It was very necessary. Our yard looks like poo, due to a.) the lack of proper lawn care by the previous homeowner, and b.) the giant field of weeds across the street from our house. The back yard also has vast bare patches, but that is a problem to address another day—say, in the Fall.
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Today, I decided to go outside and enjoy the fall weather by reading at the picnic table for a while during my lunch break. While I was sitting there, engrossed by The Stand, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. I looked over—and there was a squirrel. On the bench. With a nut in his mouth. Looking at me. We just sat there, looking at each other, for a long moment before he finally decided to go bury his nut somewhere.

And more nature stuff… instead of turning on the computer immediately after dinner and the news this evening, I ended up moving my near-dead Mums from the front yard to the back yard and planting my Roses of Sharon into individual pots. I had nine Roses of Sharon (aka Althea) all together, although two of them had rooted together so closely that I just potted them together. Most have fairly decent root systems—say, the size of a golf ball with random tendrils—but one had a nice softball-sized rootball, and one was surviving on a single solitary root strand. I have eight pots in all: two I left outside to brave the winter, one I put in the kitchen, and five are in the library/media room upstairs. Hopefully the cat won’t knock them over like she did my damn begonia.

After I got done potting, I got a hair up my ass to organize the boxes we have in the garage. Now it doesn’t look quite as ghetto… but it’s still pretty ghetto. I mean, our shelves of gardening supplies are the orange and blue milk crates that were once my bookshelves in college. Our lawn chairs are sitting on top of the old-school mower. There are packing peanuts on the floor. But now, at least, there aren’t quite as many empty boxes sitting in the back of the garage.