Not Still Winter

Not Yet Spring...


My bones are aching for some sunshine these days...at least that's what I've diagnosed the problem to be.

It's been crappy and cool for over a week now and with the time change I'm not only mentally cranky, I'm physically about to jump out of my skin in anticipation of being able to go outside and get some things done here on the property.

The house is set pretty far back on the lot off the street so we have over twice as much front yard--maybe three times as much--as we have back yard so the private areas not visible from the street and the neighbors properties are at a premium, and thus far with all of the construction and renovation and general fooling around I've done the first two summers we're probably in violation of numerous municipal codes and home-owners' association rules if we still had an active homeowners association.

Which we don't because everyone got old and all the kids graduated and moved away and they let an idiot with a backhoe tip his rig over and cave in the side of the neighborhood pool long before we moved in here, but I digress...

So I've spent the past two years whacking away at overgrown shrubbery like is common on houses near 50 years old and burning piles of branches and leaves and putting bags and bundles of stuff out on the curb for Waste Managment to pick up once in a while, and now I can see the end in sight, a rennovated landscape where I can actually start hauling new plants INTO the property and growing them rather than having to kill them and cut them down and then pay to have someone haul them away to the landfill.

A number one priority is to design and build some sort of "composting facility"--a group of two or three bins constructed of wire mesh and pressure treated lumber which will allow me to process the inevitable leaves and other folage which will be produced as a byproduct of growing a garden this year.

Then there's the expansion of the fenced area in the back yard, something which started out 24' x 24' for the Turbo Pup's use and then grew to 24' x 36' last year with the addition of two more 12 foot panels and the relocation of the end wall.

I guess I'm going to torture myself again and go rent a gas powered auger and drill three more holes in the ground another 12 feet further down the property line and end up with a fenced area that is roughly 24' by 48' in size....actually 32 feet wide on one end because I'm extending the fence all the way up to the back of the house in the process.

Then because we have rabbits the size of footballs hopping around everywhere here munching on everything in sight that's green or light brown, I'll have to put some kind of Chicken Wire or other material around the base of the perimeter to keep the little buggers away from my garden crop.

It pisses me off that you have to get a "burn permit" even here outside the city limits in Knox County, TN (my grandfathers are turning over in their graves because of that), but our neighbor got one last week which is good for a month so in return for using their "burn barrel" I'm handling processing all of their stuff laying around in piles on the line between our properties while I mix my own stuff in with theirs in the process.

Isn't it a stupid world when people have to ask their government for permission to build a fire outside?

I hear that in California the sniveling, booger eating, tree hugging, patchouli stinking, tie dyed hippy politicians won't let you cook on a charcoal grill or have a wood fire in our own fireplace INSIDE your own house in some areas of the state.

I guess if I lived in California when my house burned down they'd have wanted to come over and write me a ticket for having a fire without a permit, and if they found me roasting marshmallows on a stick over smoldering ashes when the fire department left I'd have gotten another one for grilling out in a restricted area.

$#@%ing liberal/progressives...

can't live with them, and it's apparently against the law to try to live without them because just like integrated schools in the 1960's, they bus them around to places like Eastern Tennessee and southern Alabama in electric powered mini-vans so everyone can enjoy them.

And speaking of electric vehicles, does anyone but me find it somewhat funny that more than a few of the stupid computerized "drive by wire" Toyota Prius...battle emblem of the sniveling, tree hugging, booger eating et.al. greenie weenies world wide--is accused of losing it's mind on a regular basis and crashing into stuff?

You don't hear about any mean old ever greying, ever balding bastards driving gas hog Chevy Suburbans with 454 cubic inch V-8 engines crashing into stuff out of control while getting NINE MILES PER GALLON ON REGULAR UNLEADED do you?

No...

Because we won't...

We'll just keep on putting up with the liberalization/feminization/deterioration of America, while being forced to eat our portion of government dirt and cheese and paying taxes and sitting around crapping our pants and muttering "I told you so" while beating the TV set with our walking sticks.

Geeze...I started out trying to write a little this morning from a positive perspective, but things didn't work out and I have to go now and stop thinking about this before my head explodes.