Picture This

Everyone knows that writing is a dying medium. I mean, I wouldn't be sitting here sending this off into the ether if it wasn't. I'd have a band of people hanging on my every word while I strummed a guitar. Wait a minute, I think I'm conflating the death of the ancient story teller bard with the advent of reading. Anyhow, the point still remains, no one reads anymore, except maybe you and me. Thus, I'm going to tell a story using pictures like cave painters of old.

A seed. In the beginning s was just a little ball of crying. The plus side of this time in her life was that (yeah, I lied about not writing above, and I'll do it again) she was new. And, like most people in the world, I enjoy new things. The down side of the lil skipper at this age was that she wasn't super aesthetically pleasing. She had a head that I was fairly certain wouldn't ever come back down to size.

Like most people we were really excited about our new house. We weren't specifically excited about the yard, but we were excited about having a yard. Sure the only visible growth was a giant weed that was channeling Little Shop of Horrors and, as I was later to discover, some poison ivy lining the fence, but at least it was ours. The problem was, it just wasn't all that aesthetically pleasing. It was hard to imagine how it might ever get whipped into shape. Although we did have good trash can visibility at that point.

Phase 2: The work.

s went to work feverishly trying to get her head to be a proper shape, and we were pleasantly surprised by the second month that she resembled a normal human baby. We were obviously excited because their was a brief fight when I accused S of cheating on me with an alien. We also liked to dress her in Vasco De Gama type pajamas during this phase to help make sure she was a cultured lady when she grew up.

Phase 2:
Despite our amazing trash can density and propensity for growing giant weeds we decided that the yard needed to change. As with a baby you can't just rush into a change with the yard. You have to kind of ease your way in. I eased my way in by spraying vast amounts of Round Up on poison ivy and our weed friend. Nothing says welcome to my neighborhood like poison. I guess cookies also work. Anyhow, after that brief battle we decided to give the yard a little better shape. So we bought a grill and a table to fill up the blank cement space.

Phase 3 Things just keep getting better.

By phase three s had decided to just get incredibly cute. She also decided that everything in the known world should be tasted. We started her with her hands rather than mushrooms because we are good parents. During this phase she decided to start sleeping more regularly and cooing more frequently and generally just whipping herself into appropriate cute baby shape.

Phase 3
Having attempted to make our yard look nicer we decided that we were rushing things. What if our yard didn't have to look nice? What if we just used it as an extra basement/trash dumping station. We could embrace our squirrel problem by keeping them occupied in our yard at which point I'd probably shoot them. It was a strange kind of embrace. I jest. Really we put a toilet in the backyard because we thought it would be nice to be able to relieve yourself in the quiet of the great outdoors.

What we didn't realize is that we'd flubbed the order of our projects. It turned out that neither one of us felt comfortable urinating under the watchful eye of our neighbors, so we put in a fence. I think if we'd have just switched the order we'd still have an awesome toilet in our yard.

Phase 4 Making nice things look nicer. Look, when it comes to being cute, it doesn't get any better than 4-6 months. You are the cutest you will ever be in your entire life. It's time to develop a personality, smile a little and live it up because that glorious window of cuteness is short. (Somewhat rivaled by when you turn two, but I'm sticking with 4-6 months). s headed full force into this phase of life demanding all sorts of cute clothes and trying to fake having a dimple. The whole scene was really quite divaesque.

Phase 4
Having removed our amazing outdoor toilet and having put up a fence we realized the yard felt lonely. We'd fenced out our neighbor's only to realize that they had nicer yards. We've made a huge mistake. Thus, we contacted Casey trees about helping us out with our mistake. They came by and put in a nice red maple, which we both wish was a dogwood, but hindsight is 20-20.

Phase 5 Bringing things together.

After admiring our tree for weeks we realized that it was lonely. We became concerned for it's welfare. We spent evenings sitting at its feet and rubbing its roots and listening to it talk about its day. We gave it glasses of champagne as opposed to water. I mean, we needed to do something. Thus, we again contacted the good people of D.C. to help us put in some bayscaping. According to them it was to reduce runoff into our water system, but according to me it was to give out tree some friends. Thus, our yard turned from a repository for trash cans, poison oak, and dead dogs (long story) into something approaching respectable.

And it occurred to me that we'd been working on a couple of things over the past few months and that the fixing of the one was definitely related to the other. So what if we brought them together? Could it look even better?

And it did! The last phase is maintenance and care. I'd bet more money that s looks better in five years than our yard, but that's probably okay.

And a little shout out to that other thing we've been at for 7.5 years that reminded me of S and the sort of things you decide early on, like where you're going to make your home.