Joys of Homeownership

You may remember from a previous post that Nick and I have an issue with weeds in the alley behind our house.  As an interesting aside, these are actually tumbleweeds!  Previously, we had to clear a path to be able to access the alley dumpster.  We were perplexed by this because, to our understanding, the land outside where our fence was allowed to go is not technically ours - it belongs to the city.  However, we did it out of necessity. 

Fast-forward to this week, when we received notice from the city that our alleyway was a "public nuisance" and needed to be cleaned up within 5 business days!  So, in reasoning this out, there are two possibilities here.  Option A is that we do own the land behind our fence, but we are not allowed to improve on it in any way, i.e. extend our fence, landscape, add a storage area, etc.  Bogus!  Option B is that although the city owns the land in our alleyway, we are still solely responsible for keeping it cleaned up.  Also bogus! 

Since we don't have the time or energy to fight with the city about this, though, we went ahead and spent today cleaning up all the weeds.  We take comfort in the fact that over half the houses in our neighborhood have this same issue, so they should have received the same notification. therefore many of our neighbors are in the same boat.  To clean up, we used a chainsaw, weedeater, lawn mower, rake, and industrial gloves (all of these weeds have MAJOR stickers attached and they are SHARP!

One side of the yard before.  These weeds are taller than our privacy fence!



Another view of the mega-weeds

Nick and chainsaw in action - he did all the hard work!



Now it's all nice and clear!



My boys, so proud of a job well-done

Aside from the weed clean-up we've had a lot else going on in the past few weeks. Nick is scheduled to have shoulder surgery next Thursday, and he will have to spend about 3 weeks with his right arm totally immobilized.  His shoulder was really messed up by the heavy body armor he wore every day in Afghanistan and has been bothering him a ton since he came home so we are very glad that he's finally getting the surgery! 

However, once his initial recovery period is over I will be at full-term so we have been busy finalizing things for Baby H.  Although I'll have time (and hopefully energy) to work on many things over the next 6-9 weeks, I won't have much help with the big things, like putting up furniture, etc. after October 21st.  Our goal is to have all the necessities completely ready to go by October 31st, following a weekend visit from my parents, who can help with anything that doesn't get done pre-surgery. 

I'm sorry that I don't have any new cute belly pictures - Nick's moved to swing shifts, which means that when we're home together I'm usually in my pj's and not ready to be photographed.  I'll try to get one soon, though, because my belly is exploding!