off through the new day's mist I run

What's that? you ask?

That. Is a Yard Monster.

Tree and I pulled it from its nest in the pine trees along the side of our back yard with the weird vampire neighbors (the other side has the cool neighbors who invited us to their cookout on the 4th of July). Actually, I'm not 100% sure they are vampires, but since I've yet to see any of them in the 8 months that we've lived here, I can only assume. I do know they own a small dog, though, who is sometimes out on their deck, so I guess they must not be the dog-eating kind. Unless the dog is the only one living there. In that case, bravo on teaching yourself to drive to the store to get dog food. Unless the dog ate the neighbors. Yikes...

Getting off topic. So the Yard Monster was a huge snarly viney grapey thing that was strangling like 4 trees to death. Plus it was a terrible eyesore. Tree brought home some pruning shears and we hacked and yanked and untangled and cursed for the better part of two afternoons - and there's still some left. Unfortunately, the previous occupants of our house (technically still the current owners as we are mere renters) never tried to cut the thing back. And obviously the next-door vampires/dog didn't do it either. In fact, the type of fence that separates that section of our yards (there are two different kinds of fencing on that side... sigh...) is such that I suspect the wild grape debacle was no accident.

But that part of the yard is definately coming along. We're going to pick up some blueberry bushes tomorrow and get them planted hopefully tomorrow afternoon, if the weather is ok. It's been raining something awful lately. One of our tomato plants (we only had 3) was killed in the vicious storm we had the other night. Luckily everything else was unharmed. The squash/zucchini/pepper plants are all doing fine, giving us a pretty decent return. Again, we didn't plant much because it's only the two of us here and this was our first garden, but I'm impressed! And we have so many great ideas for next year. The blueberry bushes we're planting tomorrow won't give us much, if anything, this season, but it will be nice to have berries next year. And they'll be covering up the nakedness created when we took out all the wild grape vines - the vampires' yard is overgrown, filled with junk, and just horrible, and I'd rather not have to look at it.

That was kind of snobby. :P

Well, that's pretty much it for now. Two days left of leave, then back to work. More stuff to do outside before I'm satisfied. We've got the cookout to plan for, and I know it's early, but I'm already gearing up for Halloween. And there are a whole list of recipes I want to try while we can take advantage of these fresh summer vegetables. Busy busy busy.

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Side note: Tree was featured on My Sleeping Husband! (shhhh, he doesn't know) Go on over and take a peek.

"so seek the wolf in thyself..."

- Metallica "Of Wolf and Man" -