Warming Up to the Land

Well, it's almost April, and winter is begrudgingly loosening its icy grasp on the Mid-Atlantic area... Having said this, the weather person said something about snow in the forecast this morning. Lovely.

Above, you can see a picture of my grill. I love my grill. I love grilling. Some folks only like to grill when the weather is warm. I am not one of those people--I grilled in the snow, sub-zero weather, rain, whatever. And now that the weather is looking up, you'd better believe I'm gonna be a grilling machine.

We had some friends and family over for a semi-impromptu gathering last Friday (no pics, sorry), and I grilled everything I could find--burgers, chicken, tuna, sausages. Twas most enjoyable.

By the way, my grill was looking a little gunky when I got home yesterday, so I cleaned it with (what else?) Goo Gone. Took about five minutes and a little elbow grease. Holy shit, that stuff just eats through anything. In the above picture, the grill looks like it's glowing. That's not just a light trick... that grill is super clean now.

The actual grilling surface itself is also in great shape--I keep that scraped and neat with a wire grill brush and olive oil. I'd say it's "seasoned" by now.

But the warmer weather also means it's time for an outdoor reality check. Our yard is huge. We're going to have to deal with it. By "it," I mean the grass, the overgrowth of ivy in the backyard, the bushes, the trees, the excess leaves from this past fall, etc.

And I am not too proud to say that I'm looking for a way to avoid handling these things. In fact, I'm really, really considering hiring a landscaping company to deal with our yard. Mrs. Serpico clearly loved this yard (as evidenced by the multitude of flower plantings greenly presenting themselves in the past few weeks), but she was also a lady who had no job, so she had the time (and inclination) to fool around in her yard a lot.

We do not share Mrs. Serpico's passion for such things, but we do like the yard, and, upon investigation, it has become obvious that the back yard has some truly attractive flower beds. In fact, in the course of minor raking adventures, I was able to discern a gracefully curved bad near the back of the yard. It's got a really nice reverse s-shape. But... it's full of invasive ivy and other such annoyances. In fact, the entire perimeter of the yard has been somewhat overtaken by the aforementioned ivy.

A younger, more adventurous version of myself would have embraced the idea of attacking this ivy with a machete (actually, that still sounds kind of cool in some ways), but I'm pretty sure I don't feel like fooling around in that ivy too much.



Too bad they don't make Goo Gone for ivy and weeds. Actually, I guess they sort of do, but the idea of using a heavy-duty herbicide in our back yard makes me feel like the worst kind of ecological terrorist. Long ago, in another life, I did some landscaping, and I am fairly certain that a small crew of folks could walk into our yard and clear the ivy and weeds in about six hours (probably less if they're motivated.)

I think I need to call someone.