Gardening.

Every time I think of gardening and the out of doors, I dream of having my fingers in rich soil, walking barefoot on lush green grass, and picking flowers.  I love the idea of having neatly trimmed boxwoods lining walkways, fresh herbs five paces away from the kitchen and tomatoes straight from the vine.

Sadly, every time I actually go outside to do a little work, I sneeze, I itch, I get scratched, I inevitably touch a snail and then have that gross slime that takes so long to wash off on my skin. This year, less than 1/5 of our tomatoes actually got ripe - something that NEVER happens, and we have more zucchini than anyone would know what to do with. I hate to do gardening and landscaping.

So, what have we been doing all week? Why, gardening of course. We have ripped out long hated plants -- juniper bush, I'm talking to you. And have cleared places and dug holes for new things to bloom. And all of that looks like this:

A pile taking up half of our driveway and four feet tall in the middle.  There is more in the landscape debris bin chilling at the curb, waiting to be taken away.  And tomorrow when the tree guys come to trim some of our big trees in the back yard, they'll take away this big mess.