A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words... but Only if You've Got One

We got a brand new digital camera yesterday to better document our adventures as homeowners. Ironically I have no pictures to share yet. That should change in the coming days.

After a week of slacking off to watch the Olympics Dima and I are back on the ball with house chores. Our last major endeavor (well Dima's) was to attack the remaining tree in the side yard between our neighbor and us. The branches and vines from this weed tree had entangled themselves with all the wires coming into our house from the street. With Hurricane Charley coming I was worried that the tree might thrash the wires and leave us without electricity, phone, and heaven forbid, cable. So, I asked Dima to cut the tree back. He did. Man did he ever. The tree now looks like a twiggy Tootsie Pop with a huge bite taken out of it. And until Sunday, because we were slacking and because we don't have either a wood chipper or a huge truck to haul junk to the dump in, the dead hunk of tree was just sitting in the yard. Dima and I went to Home Depot to get yard waste bags (because Montgomery County recycles yard waste) and when we returned, lo and behold, the hunk of tree was gone. Rich strikes again! But this time he did it on his own, and we can only speculate that Svetlana helped him. Well Dima and I were dumbfounded. Well we bought them a Blockbuster certificate and wrote them a nice thank you note, though neither of us are sure that quite covers how much they've helped us out with our refuse removal.

To make another big dent in the process that will eventually become the final demolition of the retaining wall between our property's and Rich's we have Mark coming over on Wednesday to take a chainsaw to the remains of the weed tree. This time we have the yard waste bags on hand so we can deal with the tree carcass immediately. We may even put the cut up trunk aside to save for our first fire in the fireplace. This way it won't seem that we are taking advantage of our neighbor's generosity... although I'm starting to wonder if Rich doesn't just like going to the dump.