This is Why I Want Kids

Trees can be serious a-holes sometimes.  Yes, I know how important they are with this business of inhaling carbon dioxide and exhaling oxygen.  Obviously you gotta love how they breathe in what we breathe out, and vice versa; it's kind of like one of those symbiotic things they kept trying to tell us about in Star Wars, Episode I when all we wanted was for the movie to stop sucking so bad.

Let's also not forget that trees give us much of the fruit we eat and all that paper and wood for our daily needs.  Best yet, trees provide the shade that those barefoot dudes in flannel shirts liked to sit in at Ohio University while they strummed the guitar.  Oh, trees are beautiful too, no doubt about it.

But for a few weeks every year the trees (I'm talking to you, deciduous) decide to get shitty and make us pay for all that good stuff.  Take a look at my weekend:

Here's the wrath of the trees from another angle:

And that's just the front yard.  Seriously, is there a better excuse for having children than the sea of leaves that these douchebag trees annually deposit on our yards?  I can't wait until I get to yank the cord of Junior's PlayStation 8 from the wall and tell that kid to get off his lazy ass and rake those goddam leaves and get me a beer while you're at it!

In a related note, here is our Concord grapevine, still alive after more than 2 months.

Why is this significant?  Probably because everything I've ever planted has an average lifespan of about 10 days.  Here's a quick breakdown of my herb garden as we near the first frost of the dormant season:

Basil - dead
Jalepenos - dead
Cilantro - deceased
Rosemary - ransacked by chipmunks
Sage - dead
Thyme - way dead
Oregano - on life support
Parsley - dying

I'm frustrated, but the word 'quit' isn't in the vocabulary of the NOML 2007 moustache growing champion.

nwb