that after spending the last three mornings/early afternoons spreading a liberal coat of water sealant on our deck that I could get by with a post-wash, pre-treatment picture from t2008, when I last did such a thorough job.

After all, I’m just trying to post this thing so I can get back to my cigar and YouTube snooker…

A few years ago, we had our first problem with yellow jackets. I took the problem very seriously. Well, somewhat seriously.

In short, I was terrified. I didn’t want to get stung, and I had this vision of them swarming out of their hole to attack, hence the layers and layers and layers.

Recently, a new batch took up residence in our front yard. I took things a little less seriously than I did in 2007. I threw an old window screen over the hole at dusk and went at them through the screen. Still, I was cautious, wearing jeans, long sleeves, and boots.

And so yesterday, I chanced upon our third nest of visitors. I’d inadvertently run over the nest a couple of times with the mower, so we were well on our way to making friends already.

This morning, I gave them a housewarming present: three gallons of boiling water.

A few more gallons in the early evening and I think they’ve got the point.

If only I could leave pheromone signs up: “You’re welcome to hang out here, but build your nest in a far corner of the backyard, well away from anywhere my children would be likely to play.”

In order to create, we must destroy.

Partial destruction is oxymoronic: in the process of destroying, we often find we need to destroy more than we’d initially anticipated.

One cannot destroy only halfway, though one can create halfway. It’s called cutting corners.

Living in a house highlights that mystery, for a house is itself a mystery.

There are leaks that leave tracks, and sinks that have no visible connection to the main drain line.

“When you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out. In.” You know, it’s going to be alright. Eventually.

With new grass everywhere — “baby grass” as L calls it — we do a lot of watering these days.

It’s enough to make me think we should have installed an irrigation system.

But then we wouldn’t get sights like these.

Last year, we overseeded our front yard. It looked fantastic.

“We have the best grass on the block!” K and I would congratulate each other. It was thick, lushly dark, and totally carpeted our entire front yard.

Over this summer, it all died.

All of it.

We looked at our wretched front yard and  looked at what it used to be like, and a sort of “why do we even try?” depression would set in.

But we don’t give up. Not we. We continue to dump money into projects that probably should be left alone. So last week, we rented semi-heavy machinery,

and started all over.

Technically, it was called “dethatching.” Practically, it was called “pulling up all the grass, most of which had long-since died.”

We were left with rows of rubbish — weeds, dead grass, almost-dead grass — that had died for mysterious reasons. Bugs? Disease? (Certainly not fungus: it was too dry this summer for any fungus to survive more than a few moments.)

Whatever it was, we didn’t want it. So ten bags of it went out to the curb.

What a waste, really. It got me thinking — if our lawn survives this coming summer — whether or not I could simply run our mulching mower over the dethatched refuse and let the yard self-feed.

After applying top soil, mulch, seed, fertilizer, and straw, the rain came. After many dry weeks, we had thirty-six hours of continual rain, followed by sporadic showers through the following week.

I couldn’t have planned it better if I’d tried.

A week later:

It’s almost worth of FailBlog: I cut down a tree in the backyard. Those two clauses would be enough to make many worry. “Did it fall on your house?” “Did it damage your neighbor’s property?” I miscalculated, but nothing so awful.

The tree — diseased and dying — was a mite, just a tiny bit too tall. A few inches. Of what significance would a few inches be in our almost infinite galaxy? For the want of a nail and all that…

When the tree fell (after much tugging and physical cajoling, for I didn’t want it to fall on our neighbor’s fence), the top portion caught a branch of a neighboring tree.

And there it remained.

Today, I took care of the problem, but not without some trepidation. As it stood — or rather, half-stood — I didn’t know which way it would finally fall. Cutting from the bottom seemed most logical: eventually, gravity would serve  to create a fulcrum out of the weakened part of the tree, pulling it in on itself.

It worked. But not after I literally cut through the entire tree, a nerve-wrenching experience. I could see the tree lurching this way or that, cracking me in the thigh, breaking a leg, an arm, a whole bag of bones. I cut through to the mid-point, then made paranoid careful cuts: squeeze the chainsaw’s trigger, a little cutting, then a retreat.

In the end, I won: no broken bones, and the wood is now is now curing. And I’m finally coming down from my chainsaw-testosterone high.

0.8, f/4.5, 60 mm, flash on slow sync