Saturday, November 15, 2008

If You've Got Something to Say


Our backyard was one of the reasons we were initially so drawn to our house. Our real estate agent described it as "idyllic". Lack of attention and the animals and their pooping-in-the-backyard ways have seen a steady decline of our personal Eden.

The horse chestnut tree in the back, while beautiful and a real asset during those few high heat days Portland sees each summer, is also a real pain in the ass. It drops huge, heavy horse chestnuts that come packaged in one of nature's most brilliant designs- a leathery, very prickly shell. Those all have to be picked up or they're sure to sprout (with as efficient and sturdy as these suckers are I'm sort of surprised we don't live in a forest of them). Then come the huge leaves. We've let the leaves just lay and compost in the past (which is why we don't have a lawn anymore). Today I thought we'd make an attempt to clean up the backyard a bit.

Vaughn announced early on that our goal should be to have our yard "look like Mr. Miyagi's" (another way The Karate Kid has permeated our lives) not only because of the beautiful bonsai and koi but mainly "because Mr. Miyagi's yard is always clean." Right. As we were picking it up our neighbor walked by and said, "Oh yeah- I was wondering if you guys were going to work on that today since it wasn't raining." Suddenly I felt our yard had become the neighborhood equivalent of a car up on blocks.

It took a while but we all worked together and got it pretty clean. Later I went outside to admire our work and an unseen neighbor off in the distance said, "MAAA." I guess Eden is in the eye of the beholder.

1 comment:

Lou said...

That's probably the least of the questionable things prospective home buyers have been told by real estate agents.

hmmm.. is it time for Jacob to distribute the neighborhood goat satisfaction survey?