From Control Freak to Car Theft, pt. 2

So following my own thread (see From Control Freak to Car Theft, pt. 1), I am stressed about the state of the yard. We missed doing the last grass mowing of the year last fall. We never raked any leaves. I haven't weeded since God left Poughkeepsie. The yard looks a bit disheveled. I posted gleefully some time ago that I didn't need to clean up the dog poop in the backyard because it rained so much that it all melted into the ground. Well that is not *quite* the case. I may have ignored the backyard for the past several months, but the dogs have not. However the accumulation of leaves and long-leaf pine needles made the other accumulation difficult to see. It was a quandry and I was in it.

So back to what couldn't you do with an hour a day. I always seem to find this hour sometime between 5:00 pm and 7:00 pm and the actual length of the hour is somewhat fluid as my husband will attest. He will also never admit it, but I think he is more than a bit concerned as to what he finds me doing with this hour every day when he gets home from work. This post splashes out in stark relief the need for that concern (I even scared myself).

We have new neighbors. The house on one side of us finally sold after three years of sporadic rehab and theft (up to and including the car theft alluded to in the last post and detailed later). The new owners made up for the previous owner's neglect with a vengeance. They put in new sod and *sanded the cracks*. They rake and powerwash and mulch and tidy every day. I look out over my domain and am ashamed. The shame rose to such an extent the other night that I got out two long extension cords and the leaf blower and right at dusk, the magic hour, I started to blow the leaves and pine needles off the back patio and lawn. And then came the amazing discovery: The leaf blower also works to blow poop. I kid you not.

When Dave got home I was chuckling maniacally and blasting poop and leaves across the grass into the bamboo. I was only sorry I couldn't get enough lift on either of them to send them sailing over our fence into the yard of the neighbor on the other side with the constantly barking dogs. By full dark the lawn and dry stream bed were free of leaves, pine needles and poop. Now I just need to get all the weeds out...