Home Sweet Home

My yard is a shambles. After having neglected it for way more than my 9 days of travel, it went from crispy brown to knee high green. It's almost as if you can watch the weeds as they grow. My beloved Plumaria in Pots are taking a certain amount of satisfaction in joining the melee, getting in on the action by extending their inevitable leaf dropping by going all kind of sickly yellow first. Oh, how I wish I had a digital camera to show you I'm not making it up. To make the mess worse, after a deluge of rain, we had our famous Santa Ana winds blow in from the opposing direction, hot and dry. This brought a combination of mud, ruts and heavy soggy leaf piles, to instant dry, static electricity and more leaf fall. Thankfully the tumbleweeds were out of the equation, but other neighborhood debris filled the part. So now, on top of an acre of thick green weeds, there are leaves everywhere, little seed pod things coming from the awful palm tree out front, a plastic child's swimming pool, and me armed with a 6.75 horsepower mower, a 2 gallon gas can, and a pair of gloves. Oh, and lest we forget to mention the best part, while getting swooped by wasps while I mowed, I followed their flight and found that they were joining a party up inside the dead fronds of the palm tree. A BIG party. WAY up in the palm tree. So I've got a little project on my hands, kind of chicken-and-eggish about who to call first, the tree trimmer or the pest control because neither wants to come without the other.

I had the windows open to air out the house, and from inside I thought I saw the house plant peeking over the ledge, giggling.

O, to be back in Hawaii.