assault on the backyard, day 16

the poor blind owl looks on, helplessly, at the destruction of his charges (the grapevines)

today is day 15 of a job that was estimated to take "three, maybe four days tops." they are not finished and i am getting really sick of this. at least they finally let me mow my lawn this weekend, so that was a plus. the reason i couldn't mow before was because they had spray painted markers for the sewer, septic and greywater lines, but i found that even when you mow you can still see them somewhat...let's hope that doesn't last long either. the sewer guys hit another sprinkler line but they did fix the one that the mole men broke two weeks ago, so the collateral damage count is still even (they were unable to fix the newly-broken one). this has been such a joy! is city sewer really worth having if you have to go through all this? i'm starting to suspect that there must be someone, somewhere, beyond the mole men and the sewer guys, who is/are getting very, very rich from this ordinance or decree or whatever the hell it was that made us have to do this.

to avoid reality, and thanks to two really well-timed bouts of insomnia, i finished book seven of the harry potter series. yes it was awesome, yes everyone should read it (provided you have read the previous six and not just watched the movies), and no i won't tell you what happens. and, i think i am going to start the entire series over again from the beginning--it really was a very satisfying series. gus is about a quarter of the way through book four--his new goal is to finish book four, watch the DVD of book four (that is our deal--if he reads the book he gets to see the movie), then blast through book five and go to the theatre to see the movie of it. i'm not so sure the movie is appropriate for a seven year old; i saw it about a week ago and i think some of the depictions of cruelty might not sit very well with him. i think i'll wait and see how long it takes him to get through book four before i start worrying about it, though.

site of violence no. 1

site of violence no. 2 (actually, this is the scariest picture i have ever shot of the house--you can really see how one end of the house has sunk a bit over the years!)

the guts of no. 1

the guts of no. 2