Uphill battle.

On Saturday, I worked on my yard for the first time. Ever. Yes, I closed on my house March 1st and have been inhabiting said house for about 90 days...we've had quite a bit of rain, so you can guess that things are, well, growing.


A truly unfortunate fact about my darling house is that the landscaping is heinous in every way. Truly, an offense to the eyes. I mean, it is absolutely the most random configuration of hideous plant-y things I've ever seen. Naturally, a fact that is magnified by my neighbor's pristine, flawlessly manicured lawn with newly up-lit trees. Bastards.


Allow me to set the scene: imagine a cute little house sitting atop a steeply sloping lawn. Now, imagine that lawn covered in the following: some cactus, a rosemary bush, two rose bushes (placed nowhere near each other), a couple crepe myrtles (sure why not?), some yuccas, a very tall branchless tree, some other unknown bushes. Oh, and don't forget the cutesy rusted wagon wheel, hanging from a dead tree stump. Because that gem'll save the yard! Idiots.


Anyway, here's what I've learned about yard work:

• It's crap. Don't do it ever. Honestly, I now envy those people who just loooooooove to work in their yards on the weekend. With their perfectly calloused hands and awesome wide-brimmed hats. You wanna know what I positively loooooove about working in my yard? Paying someone else to do it so I can lay by the pool and have a drink.
• Apparently, you're supposed to regularly keep up with yard work so that it's not such a beat down. I didn't get the memo....lesson learned.
• There will come a moment -somewhere into hour two- in which you realize you've created a bigger, uglier mess than which you started. It's like that moment when you decide to completely re-organize your closet, only to find yourself sitting in a pile of Jordache acid wash jeans and novelty socks, overwhelmed to the point of nervous breakdown.
• Speaking of which, I chopped all this shit without having any plan for cleanup...again, lesson learned.
• Ok, ok. Truth be told, there is something fantastically cathartic about taking a 14" pair of steel sheers and hacking away.

All in all, I accomplished a bit of good. But only a bit. There is definitely some sort of killer weed destroying everything in it's path; no lie: it started growing up my front windows. Quite literally overtaking the house...and I tell you, this thing has roots. The more I pulled, the more came up...it had literally grafted itself onto just about everything, in an effort to choke out all traces of life. In a flash of dread, I realized the whole thing felt very Hitchcock. Very, very Hitchcock.


Things are "cleaned up" now, although I use the term loosely. Frankly, the bushes (shrubberies? what's the diff?) are reminiscent of this haircut I got in the 8th grade...I wanted something very cool, very short, very Claire Danes (at the moment). I ended up with a sort of mutated mushroom look. I learned later that my hairstylist was fired for being a meth addicted speed freak, with a real penchant for inhaling mountains of coke.


Go figure.