Undercity Weekend

I had a nice undercity weekend here at home. Oh, "undercity" means "suburban." I'm just funny that way. I'm not sure how my neighborhood can be suburban where there's nothing truly urban anywhere nearby. I think I've identified a paradox: How can a suburban neighborhood be truly suburban with no nearby urban area? Discuss!

Anyway, I think this was one of the only weekends since I have been a homeowner (when we established Chesterley in 2002) that I did not feel any school work hanging over my head. Remarkable. We cleaned up the yard and put down mulch on most of the flower beds. So far we've put down 13 of those 2 cubic feet bags of the hardwood mulch. I think we need about three or four more for this one area along a fence line, but we need to wait for the hostas and bleeding hearts to come up first. We're trying a new weed-reducing method (just in a few spots) of laying newspaper down on the beds where we know plants are not growing and then covering them with the mulch (aren't we the little weekend warriors?) (so damn undercity of us). I hate weeding, but I hate how weeds look even worse. So, all of the beds except for one are done...and that one should be done next weekend when the plants start to come up. Feels like we're doing all we can to foster good healthy spring & summer gardens. I like gardening. I especially like it when I don't feel like I REALLY should be doing something else. Wife and I enjoy gardening together. Much fun. We like seeing the results of our work, and hopefully we'll reap some rewards for this work in a month or two when the growing season really kicks off.

This year I'm not going to use regular fertilizer on our lawn. I need to research organic lawn treatments, since Moose may be sensitive to toxins and stuff. It'll be different, but I always felt a little bit strange about pouring chemicals into our lawn and then later rolling around in the lawn with Moose and Chester. Should be a fun adventure, and perhaps less expensive than the fertilizers we'd buy at Large Home Improvement Store Out at the State Highway.

For dissertation work this week, I will edit hither & yon and await IRB and DC approval patiently. I've sent the proposal draft out to a few colleagues and relatives for their edits. Sort of fun to hear what they have to say. I realize this activity of sharing the work is part of my extraversion: I get energy from other people. Even with writing, I need to make it a social process. Otherwise, I'd seriously lose my mind and would probably lay mulch and newspaper over it by accident.