Soooo Lazy...

I am wrapping up the Memorial Day weekend, in which I did none of the spring cleaning I was going to do, by ignoring the blogging I should be doing now. However, I don't want to leave you with nothing, so here is an oldie but goodie. Originally published in April of 2007, enjoy "The Pile."

Each year in Salt Lake there is a city wide clean-up. This means that all residents can put any amount of junk on the curb in front of their house and the city will come and haul it away. It also means that for the two weeks leading up to the clean-up any number of people can be seen scavenging off the piles of trash. Just this weekend alone I saw someone loading up a couch, and another group helping themselves to a discarded toilet. There are also a number of families who make the scavenging a bonding opportunity. Seriously. I saw Mom, Dad, Grandpa and what looked like twelve kids out cruising up and down the streets looking for a new entertainment center. All they needed was a little old lady tied to a rocking chair on top of their car -- and they could have been a sitcom. The city has tried to discourage the trash pickers -- and even had one point had cops patrolling during the clean-up writing tickets. But that just forced the scavengers to work under the cover of night -- like raccoons.

This is the first year Ryan and I have put out anything for clean-up -- mainly because for the past two years we have totally spaced it and not put anything out until two days after the trucks came. And then it was just littering. But this year we were on the ball -- and we had blackberry bushes to destroy.

When we first moved into the house we loved the blackberry bushes. With the pond and the cherry tree, the rhubarb and the herbs it was like we had moved into Eden. But, slowly over the past two years to blackberry bushes have taken over, destroying the rhubarb, the herb plants and moving dangerously close to the cherry tree. And blackberry vines are not something you can just go and pull out. They have barbs, big barbs, and the vines are made from something slightly stronger than titanium. Yet, three weeks ago Ryan decided no blackberry bush was going to push him around and bravely went into the backyard. I went to the local church to light a candle. For the next fourteen days Ryan did battle, coming into the house covered in dirt, with aching muscles and any number of scratches. And of course all the scratches itched like crazy because they were filled with bramble tips. Those bushes were not going down without a fight. I thought about telling Ryan to quit and we would hire someone, or that we could light the bushes on fire, anything so that he wouldn't get hurt any more -- and I wouldn't have to help.

After two weeks Ryan was triumphant in tearing out all the bushes -- and we gained a good three feet to our yard. But now we had a problem. The clean-up crews don't come into your backyard. We had to move this giant pile of vines -- to the front of the house. And I still didn't want to help. I was about to play the "I will eventually carry our child" card when Ryan volunteered to do it. Sucker. I bought him a tarp and this entire weekend he has loaded the beaten bushes onto it and dragged them out to the street. The finished result is a sight to behold.

That is a nice pile...

If you didn't know any better you would think a whole team of beavers had been working round the clock to build that thing. Now, I just have to sit on the front porch to make sure some bandit doesn't come by looking for a whole bunch of really sharp sticks....