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_{Pictured: not my pile of branches. I didn’t get a picture for some reason.}

I made a terrible mistake today and did some yard work on purpose. We have a large tree in the front yard whose branches hang too low, so that if you’re mowing or whatever they need to be moved out of the way to take care of the part of the yard under the tree. I was all ready to post something on Twitter or whatever commenting on how it had turned out to be one of those jobs that you dread for forever and then takes like fifteen minutes when you actually do it, and then I discovered my neighbor standing behind me. I had headphones in, so this isn’t terribly surprising, mind you.

At any rate, I then got to have a lovely conversation about how too much of my tree was overhanging her yard and also overhanging the roof of her house. Now, this tree is really tall— I’m terrible at estimating distances, but it’s easily over twice as tall as my house, so obviously doing something like cutting a straight line along the property line wasn’t going to happen. I pointed out that we were having some folks out sometime soon to cut down the locust tree in the back yard and that I’d ask if they could hack this one back a bit on the taller branches, and that I’d take care of the stuff I could reach today.

And then it occurred to me that somehow the following had happened: one of my neighbors came over, complained about the state of my yard, demanded that I fix the state of my yard, and that somehow I not only did it but I’m not even mad about it. Like, that’s got to be a tricky conversation to have with somebody, right? I can see that going poorly. Were the situations reversed I’d have just asked if she minded if I cut the damn branches myself to avoid the chance of a confrontation going south and ending up on YouTube or some shit.

The problem here is that I’d already cut enough branches to fill our two allocated yard waste bins, so now there’s a giant pile of branches in front of my house the size of a car that are just going to have to sit there until what’s in the bins now gets taken away, and then I can cut them apart and fill the bins again. And frankly it’s not impossible that the process will have to be repeated twice. In the meantime, I’ve been sweaty and tired all afternoon and a lot more achy than I intended to be, because using a pole saw for an hour is tiring.

Also, I made sure that not one single inch of that pile of branches is on her yard. I’m considerate like that.

10247457_10152353417968926_7517047325752612395_n Unless you have spent a lot of time wandering through my archives or you’ve been here since very close to the beginning of the blog, you probably have not seen this post yet. It’s a shame, because it’s one of my favorites; go take a look if you like. And while you’re reading, note the part about the milkweed.

The fucking milkweed still isn’t dead.

However.

It’s gorgeous out tonight; it was crazy-humid all day but it’s cooled into a perfect evening. The boy wanted to play outside so I went out with him and my wife and randomly decided it was time to mow. This makes today the first day of summer, by the way; not only did I mow the front lawn for the first time in 2014 but I dodged the first couple dozen Deathwishes of the summer.

(There are ten thousand toads living in my yard. They are all named Deathwish on account of their constant insistence on hopping underneath my mower. I used to be careful about nudging them out of the way or mowing around them and then I realized that in three years of mowing I have never once managed to accidentally murder a toad with my lawnmower, which means that they can burrow or hang on or something like that, so I don’t bother dodging them any more.)

Anyway, yeah, I mowed. And I did something else tonight: I took another step toward unwelcome adulthood and spent good money on my lawn. It’s official; my lawn-zany neighbor has won. We hired Trugreen tonight. I was already strangely excited about it, which hurts me in my soul. But I am sick of hating my lawn and supposedly they help with that sort of thing.

Then I mentioned the milkweed. And the salesman dude (Oh. There was a salesman dude. He came by yesterday while the boy was taking his bath and came back again tonight at my request while I was mowing.) told me that they have some sort of liquid death that they will put on the milkweed and the milkweed will die in horrible pain. As will all living things under the circle they put the stuff on, straight down to the center of the earth.

Which is worth the summer’s $277 fee all the fuck by itself.

I am sooooo looking forward to this.