Up a tree

The list keeps moving along. Three plants in our "side garden" that I thought were trees turned out to be one vine snaking its way along those awful railroad ties of edging. After removing the edging it took me about an hour to dig that beast out.

It's mostly grass in there. Easy enough to just scrape off the surface. Believe it or not, it seems like there are wild onions in this plot along with a conifer of some sort. I'm a little less than halfway through that process, but a three-day weekend with no softball will make it possible to get a lot done.

We painted Robert's room yesterday -- and by "we" of course I mean mostly Cate. She did all the tough spots and I did the broad strokes on a wall and a half. It will be sleepable tonight. Robert enjoyed sleeping in the living room last night.

The tree in the backyard had an ancient rusted chain with some silly swinging rope hanging from it. The kids have enjoyed it but it didn't strike us as particularly safe and it certainly wasn't pretty. All we've heard the past five years is the importance of staging the house -- which makes me wonder why the heck we bought this house with all the staging issues it had. It still has some of those.

There was also a frayed piece of yellow nylon rope in the tree, about 12 feet off the ground. We don't have a ladder (must rectify that for the next house) and standing on the lawn furniture didn't get the job done, so I figured I better climb it. I really wanted that chain down.

So there I am, alas. Up a tree. Not sure how to get down.

Anyway, I'm wasting time writing this when I should be out digging or something. It's just hard to see the finish when the line we've drawn keeps moving. Hard to get motivated today.