My Backyard

They showed up at 9:45 and stayed until 5:30. Wow.

They did quite a job on the backyard, and the front patio, and the sides of the house. They pulled out the ivy that had lined the back ten feet or so of our yard -- I know ivy makes excellent ground cover, but I can't stand the stuff. Also, I was never quite sure of what was back there. As it turned out, what was back there was a soccer ball and some other equipment left by the previous owners' gardener.

The gardeners trimmed the trees, hacked down everything that needed hacking or pruning or was just plain dead, started a compost pile, and investigated the situation with the built-in sprinkler system. It turns out there are far more sprinkler heads in the backyard than are actually used when the water gets turned, which means that half the yard isn't being watered. Swept up an incredible pile of leaves, branches, and other assorted materials.

It's like I can actually see what's back there now and can start making plans.

Well, one thing I've noticed I'm going to have to do more research on, dammit. The previous owners -- or maybe the previous owners before that -- built sections into the garden using railroad ties. Huge beams of wood that neatly divide up the garden into raised beds, walkways, the bark-covered patio. A pile of ties created the retaining wall for one end of the garden -- but it seems to be collapsing. A middle tie of the wall has jutted out, as if to say, "I'm outta here." I hadn't seen this before because it was so overgrown with shrubbery and vines. (Did I hear someone say, "Shrubbery!"?)

And because we're on a hill, the sides of our property that face downhill seem to be sloping treacherously. As if a couple of good rains might take away all of our topsoil. The gardener recommended getting more of those railroad ties to shore up the edges and prevent erosion...along with getting a whole bunch of soil to make the whole patch of ground level.

I realize that we're on a hill and making the ground level goes somewhat against the pull of nature, but isn't that what gardening is all about?

A part of me feels guilty having a bunch of guys come in here and pull the place out of the Mesozoic Era (what's that dinosaur doing here? when you said this place was overgrown, I had no idea...). Paying people to do work for me. Like somehow I've failed because not only am I a writer who needs reinforcements to keep writing, but I don't even do my own house-and-gardenkeeping.

(Hey, there's a thought: if I don't write, I have to do the housework! Nah, that'll never work, because early on in our relationship Darin told me he never wanted me to have to do the dishes. He's mine, all mine, I tell you! I still do the dishes, but only when the kitchen sink has filled up and I can't stand it any more.)

One of the concepts Darin introduced me to is that not only is time money, money is time. You can buy yourself more time by paying other people to do things, such as clear out your backyard and fix your sprinkler system. I mean, it was expensive to have a team of gardeners come in and read the riot act to the backyard, but not as expensive, time-consuming, or fatal as waiting for me to do it.

And, in the meantime, I did some research for one of the projects I'm working on. Did you know that anthropophagy is the fancy word for cannibalism? Not only is it a hot topic on soc.anthropology, but it's a classification of weird types of homicides, such as those committed by Friend of Man Jeffrey Dahmer.

While I'm at it, can anyone tell me why you shouldn't drink animal's blood that you could get at a butcher shop? No, I haven't taken up weird ritual practices, no matter what my last few postings may seem like; I have a reason for asking this. I seem to remember there was something about strange diseases other than Mad Cow Disease you could get from drinking raw blood.