Got Wood?

Stop being dirty, people. This post is not about THAT kind of wood.

You know, I shouldn't have started out with chastizing you like that. Aside from the fact that it's rude and assumes that you're out there snickering at some juvenile reference to wood, I am the last person to point fingers at anyone else for such a thing. For example, I was at a Very Professional Meeting a couple of months ago and one of my colleagues reviewed this book by Patricia Windsor called Nightwood, and I, being the Very Professional Librarian that I am, started to giggle. NIGHTWOOD. Ha ha hee hee haaaaa! I caught my friend M's eye across the room, and saw that she was giggling too, which was good because it made me feel like I wasn't the only one who is 13, but it was also bad because now we had SEEN each other laughing and there's nothing like being in a situation where it is inappropriate to laugh and catching the eye of someone else who is busting a gut too.

But come ON. NIGHTWOOD! Even after a couple of months. Still funny.

So the wood I am referring to is the wood in my yard. This wood is not relegated to a particular time of day. Not Nightwood, nor Morningwood. At my house, it's twenty-four hour wood. All wood, all the time! Haha hahaha ha! Ok, I'll stop now. Really. I can talk about wood without doing that. I can.

So, as I think I've mentioned before, my yard, when I got it, had not been taken care of for many, many years. It was an overgrown mess of the highest order. So, the first weekend I lived there, I (along with my trusty posse) cut a swathe through the brush, just so that we could get from the street to the front door and back again (which is only about 25 paces). That first weekend, we generated 35 yard waste bags (those big tall brown paper ones) worth of wood clippings, leaves, dead plants, and other woody ephemera. Thirty five! We hauled that away, and started again.

So in the past month, we have worked on the yard more, cutting it back, pruning, shaping. It's serious Scissorhands action around here. I feel like it is some epic battle-- me against nature, and I am swimming in futility. You! Will! Be! Tamed! While the trees look down on me and pee their pine needles all over my sorry head. And still I forge ahead, my own personal Manifest Destiny, where I push through, leaving destruction in my wake, until I reach the promised land of mow-able grass.

And, after a month, I am drowning in yard waste. As curbside pickup is expensive, we have been piling up yard waste bags in the garage and yard, to be taken to the yardwaste dump at the end of the week. So far, we have 74 bags. Seventy four. We also have branches to bundle and chopped up tree trunks. Wood. Miles and miles of wood.

My wood is bigger than yours.





Kiss the rings, I'm out.
Librarian Girl