Is it a bad thing when -- wondering why there's nothing coming out of a corner downspout despite the ongoing deluge -- you venture out after the rain lets up, ready to pull a few fistfuls of leaves and "helicopters" out of the spout and come up empty, only to look up and see . . . @#$&*%! maple trees growing in the gutter?
ADD THAT to our crumbling concrete-and-cinder block stoop. And the hill we live on that's . . . uh . . . shifting under us. Front walks don't like that. Neither do driveways or foundations.
So far, the only advantage I find to home ownership is having a fenced yard for the dogs to do what dogs do (or doo) and a spot to grow a garden.
Maybe I wouldn't mind home ownership so much, well into middle age, if I had a smaller house with a radically smaller yard. Not on a freakin' hill. Good luck with that in Omaha, however -- the no-hill part, that is.
Last evening, I abused my back cutting scrub mulberry trees out of the flora we actually wanted to keep. (Hell, there's probably some mulberry saplings in the gutter, too.) Mulberries are the crack cocaine of birds and squirrels.
The only difference between mulberries and crack, apparently, is that people crack doesn't cause diarrhea -- at least not that I've heard. Critter crack does . . . at least in birds.
So, the damn trees had to go, and my 47-year-old back had to pay the price. But at least I got to eat the mulberries . . . tasty. But why do I have this overpowering urge to go poop on the car?