Yay! The weather is nice again! Which is good, since our yard needs some serious work. We spent all day yesterday cleaning outside. I raked while Karl cut back the neighbors bamboo (with pruning shears and a hand saw). Then he climbed onto the roof to cut back more bamboo and sweep the gutters. it was pretty bad. We filled 14 yard waste bags with leaves and acorns, and today I have a huge pile of bamboo that needs to be cut down further into 3' pieces and bound. The yard looks kind of barren, but at least it's clean. If we keep it up, we may get sun in the back windows next summer. (The days are too short now, the sun never reaches the back of the house.) Of course all night long I heard things falling outside. I thought it was raining, but it was just the wind knocking more leaves and acorns into our yard. I haven't even touched the front of the house.
We met our next door neighbor (the one who planted the bamboo). He talked about why he didn't buy our house way back when (the foundation is cracking), but also mentioned that in a few years when the Metro reaches the new station down the street, all these houses will probably be razed to build more townhouses. That makes me sad. Sure it's an older neighborhood, but it has nice single family homes, with large yards, parks nearby, and no homeowners association. Now we have to keep that in mind for when we start looking for a house to buy. He said nothing of our huge pile of bamboo. I think he was more pleased that someone was actually doing yard work, given the previous tenants didn't believe in cleaning.
Sunday was spent in Baltimore helping Karl's brother move to a new house. Hopefully a place less likely to get mugged walking home. (Not his brother, his brothers roommate.) It's essentially a townhouse, but for normal folks, not rich people. It's on a narrow street, barely 3 cars wide, and people park on both sides of the road. When we tried to get the truck down the street, someone had lovingly double parked, and left. I don't think we would have been at fault if we had hit the car trying to get around it, but Alex did a good job and didn't hit anything. Luckily the car in front of the house left, and there was plenty of room to park.
Come to think of it, I can't remember what I did on Saturday. Hmm... Ah, yes, we took Bayram to doggy-day-care. We need a place to board him the day of "The Rally" and all the boarding kennels want to 'evaluate' your dogs temperment around other dogs. We decided to start with the cheapest one (because we're cheap, I mean thrifty.) The Animals House just recently started boarding dogs, so basically they just keep all the dogs together during the day, and put whoever is left at the end of the business hours into separate kennels. It seemed kind of crowded to me, and they said Saturday was their slow day. A lot of barking. Bayram was kept in the pen for older, mellower dogs. He's still technically a puppy, but he acts like such an old man sometimes. Like after a hike trying to get into the car when he makes a big show of how hard it is. We drive a sedan, not a truck. Anyways, he charmed them, like always, and now we have a place to keep him on the 30th. We're not really going to be gone all day, but just in case, I'd rather have someone keeping an eye on him. The only difficulty is that the kennel is in the opposite direction of the train station. Oh well. The rally is technically only from noon to three, but I know how these things go.
Tomorrow we may have guests from Montreal visiting (Karl's family's friends) on their annual migration to Florida. Originally the plan was to visit them in DC for dinner. Now this means I may need to really clean the house. I know it's not 1950, but I still want people to know I can keep a decent house. Besides, it's not like I have anything else to do all day. It's how I 'earn my keep'. Of course in 1950, a housewife wouldn't be expected to cut down a huge pile of bamboo with pruning shears and a hand saw. Which is what I'm off to do now.
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