NICE WEEKEND

This turned out well. My son and his girlfriend--you understand she is a woman but what do you say, "womanfriend"? Ack. "Lady friend?" sounds...cold.) came up from Knoxville, TN so he could do a job interview. (Altogether now, start thinking positive interview result thoughts.) He won't know for several weeks.

Anyway that was Thursday. Friday the three of us went to Navy Pier downtown to see the SOFA art show see yesterday's blog.

Yesterday they came over and decided to work in the yard. In our back, we have a 6 foot privacy fence. Behind that fence live Oreo and Quentin. Quentin is a huge black lab possibly mix but maybe not. Oreo is a totally live-wire Border Collie with the brains (maybe)of a physics professor and the energy of 37 two-year olds who are hungry and need a nap and just ate 3 candy bars. Oreo barks. My dogs bark. They run the fence barking and growling and throwing (since they are separated by a 6 foot fence quite securely) meaningless threats of bodily harm and taunts.

To stop this nonsense, I put up, using a series of old ex-pens, a fence about 8 feet inside the big fence, to keep the dogs apart. Yeah like that worked.

In the meantime, the buckthorn and wild roses and weeds and so flourished in that 8 foot strip until I had a veritable jungle back there, really bad, and ugly and impossible for me or John to tackle alone. And then, to top it all off, we were gone for 4 months and did no gardening, no weeding. That section and my garden went to hell in a handbasket. Huge stands of Tickseed hung over the fence into Roger's yard on one side. A baby Buckthorn leaned heavily against the fence, making it sag. Wild roses grew canes up into the trees which was kinda pretty and weird but not exactly the suburban yard look we were hoping for. Juniper from Oreo's yard leaned into the OTHER fence and hung heavily over. Buckthorn suckers were everywhere. Maples began to thrive in the garden. It was awful.


So for most of the afternoon, Christopher, armed with a tiny electric chain saw, and Stacey, covered in tickseed (I could easily have entered her in Sofa as Sculptured Object if she could have held still enough.)cut and piled, and cut and piled and cut and piled and now...it is a miracle land. Not clear cut, but so much better.

Before we took the ex-pen fence down (I really do not want the dogs back there--we have found things thrown over the fence that would not be healthy at all--) All the dogs came out, Nigel in his cart-- and for once he seemed happy to be in the yard and roamed around and wagged his tail. It was great.
And then my daughter Stacey and her husband arrived, and we  had a lovely dinner-- stuffed manicotti with a tomato sauce that Stacey the other Stacey not my daughter Stacey (see how complicated this is getting?) made and bottled and brought, and garlic bread and a fabulous apple upside-down cake my daughter Stacey not Christopher's Stacey made. And by then the day was reluctantly almost gone, and my daughter had to leave to take care of their dogs-- they have an hour's drive-- and the other two could barely keep their eyes open, and we wound it down.

This morning I am going to have breakfast with Christopher and Stacey and  then they are headed back to Tennessee. Nigel is on my bed, Llewis with him.
Things are creeping back toward normal altho I still have some dishes to wash and laundry to do and Nigel to walk, and some limbs and brush to move from place to place in the yard.

I liked my weekend. I am sorry Christopher and Stacey will not be here for Turkey day, but on the other hand, it was the best non-Turkey day weekend I have had for a long, long time.

Pictures later.