I love nature. A photo Essay.

I don't know that this is exactly a photo essay. But it sounded cool right? I dont really like nature. I dont like bugs and gross little critters. (I do like flowers and seeing the seasons change through trees and such though) Last week I found a dead bird in the yard. Then a few days later an animal that I thought was a mouse was dead in the driveway. Ella and I deduced that it was in fact, a mole. A baby mole. Dead. Gross. Yesterday a bird flew at the window by my computer and just sat there. He was on a ledge and then when I moved, he left. Today, a small yellow finch kept flying at my bedroom window. all day. no joke. I saw him fly at it and rest on a ledge. He pecked at the window. The cat noticed, Jed noticed, then later when Erick got home, he noticed. Pretty bird, weird behavior. I think this would be a better photo essay if I had more pictures. But who wants pictures of dead animals? I should get a picture of Ella's impression of the dead mole though. That is awesome.

A couple weeks ago we saw a big ole ground hog in the backyard. nasty. I found some mysterious critter poop in the yard today too. I think it was ole Puxatawnie's. So what did I do to rid myself of all these disgusting nature-ish issues? (Did I mention that a bird has been stuck in our garage for about a week?) "Say hello to my little friend."
I took this sucker to my three nasty bushes in the back of the house. Breeding ground for earwigs, crickets, spiders, and mean birds. Although, I saw a robin wandering on the porch after my extreme trimming, and he seemed sort of lost. Sorry dude. But don't worry, we have tons of other bushes. (until they meet my friend). You can sorta see the bottoms of these bushes in the below photo.


This picture shows the bushes showing through our windows. Gettin the idea of how giant these suckers were yet? I didn't think about before pictures.
and... ta da!!! Gone!!! Obviously need to do some sweeping, cleaning, and maybe some mulching??? What do you suggest here? The dirt is VERY sandy and loose. Wild green onions keep growing there and I have to pull them. I can't believe how much it opened up that patio. The stone squares are not ideal. But seen's how these bushes were annoying me for 4 years... one thing at a time. See that giant mass of bushes in the background? Remember this post? Lots of good pictures there. So, yah, time to trim those too. But seeing those past photos helps me see that with some maintenance, we can get things looking decent again.

I sprayed weed killer on the cracks of grass and weeds... so I am waiting for them to die. I think I can actually see patio furnature out here some day. We have a built in gas grill and gas light on this patio too, that we dont use - they dont work. Any ideas on getting these out of the ground? geesh. I love retro, almost as much as I love nature. (yes, sarcastic inflection).

Ok, well, my mid-term I am supposed to be taking dissappeared, so I blogged instead. Ok. Night.