More Musings on a Fence

Doug has finally tired of the entire neighborhood being able to see our backyard.

More specifically, he is tired of having to keep our backyard neat so that the Code Nazis from the city don't write us a ticket. Truly, our city is almost as bad as an HOA. Weeds are expensive, around here. Still better than San Diego, though: in the middle of a drought, they can't water their lawn, but they get fined for brown spots.

Anyway. Doug spent a long day marking the location of the fence, then starting to dig post holes. This is not easy in our yard. The ground is packed clay, difficult for even a tiller to break through. Doug got three holes dug and started on three more before he called it a day.

Here's what it looks like now.

Yup, looks fabulous. But all I care about is that there is progress being made. Actual, measurable progress. Woot to the wahoo!

Some Things Just Don't Work Out

Since painting Collin's room, I've been trying to lighten things up in there...so it looks less like a bloody cave. Here was one of my efforts:

Cute, right? I wanted to give him something graphic and colorful, while lightening up the space. Malena and I found this word map at WalMart while shopping for school supplies, and I thought it would be perfect. Then we spent a few minutes looking for a poster frame...and totally struck out.

Okay, so we were stuck just sticking it on the wall. Not a big deal. We went home, I leveled it and attached it to the wall, expecting Collin to be excited.

Nope. He ripped it off his wall. Argh. Sadly, it's not even in one piece anymore, because he wasn't gentle. He wanted to keep it for a treasure map, though, so I guess it won't be exactly wasted, but it still feels like a waste of good money to me.

Sigh. Better luck next time, I guess.

Chicken Updates!

Mondays is usually when I show you a flower or two. Sadly, there isn't anything new blooming this week. I spend quite a bit of time trimming back the spent flowers these days. Perhaps I need to look into something that blooms in August? Ah, maybe next year. In the meantime...

It's been awhile since I've shown you our new chickens (the last ones were eaten by some predator roaming the neighborhood). So, I thought I'd show you a picture. It's difficult to get any picture of them, since they do not stand still. But what do you want - they are chickens.

They are just beautiful, no?

Doug can sit for hours and just watch them roam their little pen. For me, watching him is much more fascinating than watching the chickens. However, they're all pretty adorable.