To all of you still checking in regularly, I appreciate it. Unfortunately, though, I've lost my mojo. For nearly three years, I kept this up at a pretty regular pace. I didn't ever seem to have a shortage of something to say. But, since July, I just haven't had any motivation. I've been too tired, too burnt out, just too "done."
Interestingly, right around the time that my thoughts dried up and I stopped posting regularly, the tree in front of the shed of knowledge also started to die. In late July, the leaves started to wither and turn brown. By mid-August, they started to fall. It's now completely bare. Yes, I know that fall is here. But, as you can tell from this picture, all the other trees still have green leaves.
Coincidence? I don't think so.
I had a productive day working in the yard. I put in about 6 hours, starting with my ongoing fight against the invasive clover-like weed that's crept out of the bed around the mailbox and started to take over my lawn. I finally beat the quack grass after doing battle with it for the past few years and now this little bugger starts to cause problems.
It's been difficult to get rid of this particular weed. The problem is that it's all wound up in my creeping juniper. That means I can't use Round Up. The only way this stuff is going away is through hand-to-hand combat.
I spent almost three hours down there this morning. My guess is that I got rid of about 95% of it. But, I also had to dig up part of the lawn that surrounds the mailbox bed so that I can re-seed it. If the weed comes back, I'll have to do my best to keep it contained to the bed so that I can at least have a weed-free lawn.
After finishing that job, I moved on to trimming forsythia bushes, splitting and moving iris bulbs, transplanting daisies, and trimming the foundation bushes. All in all, it was a pretty nice day and I was feeling good. Until I came inside, that is.
I walked in around 3:30PM. I checked www.espn.com and, much to my surprise, the Bills were actually leading the Patriots 21-17 early in the 4th quarter. I went upstairs and turned on the TV to see if the local channel was actually showing the game. They weren't but I decided to settle in to watch the end of the Titans - Steelers game and watch the scores crawl across the bottom of the screen. Midway through the 4th quarter, the Patriots cut the lead to 21-20. I started to get a bad feeling (or, should I say, a familiar one). Rather than continue watching the ticker, I decided to jump in the shower.
When I finished cleaning up and came back out into the bedroom, lo and behold, CBS was just switching over to show the final 3 minutes of the Bills - Patriots game. That was just enough time for me to watch:
- Two successful third down conversions by the Patriots
- A 20-yard run by the Patriots' third-string tail back when all he was trying to do was kill time
- The winning 35-yard field goal with all of 5 seconds left that allowed the Patriots to, once again, beat the Bills.
New coach, new quarterback, same result. So much for feeling good.
