Taking The Lawn Into My Own Hands

He didn't show.

I called that evening and he said that he had forgotten that Monday was, of course, a holiday. Okay, fine. We made another appointment for today at noon.

He didn't show.

At about one-thirty I decided I couldn't take it any more, I hated the way our house was starting to look on the outside (now that the inside's almost completely done, I have time to fret about the outside), and I was going to do something about it.

I went outside and started sweeping the front deck with the pushbroom I'd bought a million years ago and raking up leaves with the dopey little rake the previous owners had left in the backyard.

After an hour or so of this, I discovered a few things. One, I needed gardener's gloves very, very badly. Two, I didn't have nearly enough tools on hand for the job I had in front of me, such as pruning back the vines that had started to run rampant in the absence of adult supervision. Three, I was hot and sweaty because it was the hottest time of day to be doing physical labor like this, and boy, wasn't I a dork.

I gave up on this, went inside, picked up my book on gardening and my ubiquitous yellow legal pads, and left for a few hours.

I went to a cafe, the Horseshoe, that I'd walked by Monday night, which was down by Tower Records on Ventura and looked okay. I went in with my yellow legal pads and discovered not one but two guys in there with laptops typing away. (One of them had a stack of index cards...screenwriter? you think?) Yay! A replacement for Coffee Society! I sat down and figured out more of my Homicide spec, including legal questions I have to ask before I can figure out the rest. I also did a little reading about gardening, but I didn't find any direct answer to the question, What do you do when you've already killed the garden by completely neglecting it and not even turning on the water?

After the Horseshoe cafe, I headed over to Orchard Supply Hardware. With all this gardening, I have the feeling I'll be spending a lot more time here. I bought a pruning shears, gloves, the Sunset Basic Gardening book, and some more clean up equipment.

I came back home and went on the offensive.

I completely sheared off the vine that's been obscuring one corner of our deck and blocking our house numbers on the street. Anything that was within reach got snipped. I cleaned up several thousand handfuls of leaves. I filled the LA Waste yard clippings container very quickly.

I also gave myself a big knot in the back of my right calf. And my shoulders don't feel so good now either.

But I can walk across my front deck fairly easily now. I can see what's what, including the dead azaleas. (Sigh.)

While I was at OSH, the gardener stopped by the house. (Just a little late.) He talked to Darin and arranged to show up tomorrow at noon.