On Saturday Mike drove down with his grill and helped Marc to remove the big ugly cactus from the back yard. Technically the removal of the cactus wasn't critical to the barbecue party.. but it made me happy. I just don't groove on the fact that my yard includes cactus. Cactus doesn't fit with my mental image of a verdant luscious yard. I think we have one more left in the front yard.

I have no green thumb.. I don't think Marc has one either.. but I know what I don't like. About 60% of everything in my yard falls into the "don't like" category. The things that I do like are oddly placed. I suppose we've got the next 5-7 years to rearrange everything to our liking. Just in time to sell the place and move on to a new challenge. Maybe we'll be lucky and do all of our learning on this house and be able to move on as experts to the next house. We can only hope.