One of the things that has plagued our house since day one is the trash in our yard. We're on the corner so we have a lot of frontage, our side street (the longer stretch) is slightly downhill, and we're also in, as dear readers know, a neighborhood where there, ahem, doesn't seem to be a lot of neighborhood pride. (I'm trying to be nice here.) So the net effect is that our yard, and especially the grass on either side of our (now three-year-old) sidewalk (outside of our decrepit fence), is constantly filled with trash. Adam insists it's worse because we're downhill and trash just blows down the street into our yard, but I'm not willing to give our neighbors that much credit. Sometimes it's just a cigarette butt here and there, but more often it's full-blown trash: potato chip bags, White Castle cartons (as most of you know, we live in the shadow of the White Castle....which will be the title of Adam's memoir), gum wrappers, bottle tops, and cans. And lots and lots of dog poop. Yucch. As this was an exceptionally beautiful weekend (finally), Adam and I got outside yesterday to try and start to tame some of the mess. Aaron came with us and sat in his stroller (sun shade up of course). We made fair progress on the back half of the yard and the area around the garage, but it will take another major effort to do the front part, which is worse because it's weedier and on a more trafficked street. Adam has been talking to fence installers and we're hoping to have a new fence up soon, which may help somewhat since the decrepit fence is awkwardly standing against a hill of stone and grass sloping down from the backyard area, which is most often where trash gets trapped. So when we have the new fence installed we'll have to either grade the hill down or add sod and grass to where the new fence will be. Yet another decision, yet another expense, yet another house story to be told.