I learned something at PetCo yesterday. They have found a way to monetize tail shapes in Siamese Fighting Fish. Once they were $6 a bucket, take your pick of color or shape. Now there is a code for fin shape! And some of them are $28! If the choice is between $28 for something that will live for 3 weeks, and like, the equivalent in hot dogs, then I am going for hot dogs.

I like to turn off my alarm and listen to the girls gossip about me. Strudel hears more than her sister because she does not leave on weekends.

“Mom’s planting KIWIS!” she whisper-shouted over the clank of their breakfast plates. That child does not have a quiet bone in her body.

“Really,” said Franny, who is used to her sister getting things hilariously and disastrously wrong. “Real kiwis? Like these?” she asked, no doubt pointing to the ones they were chowing down on now.

“Yes real kiwis, they are vines. And Mom’s talking about moving the hot tub, but it’s too heavy.”

There is a horrible, wretched, decaying hot tub in the corner of the yard. I am certain it’s a mosquito vector in the summer and is an ugly blue tarp-covered mass year round. I called a local junk hauling service just to see and they quoted me $400. It’s steep to consider as a renter. The back up plan is to move it to an unused part of the yard where it will be shaded and not fill with water. I am also hoping to cover it with something else.

This yard has a lot of just generic junk in it, which makes me CRAZY. When the girls go out to play they will find random things, like flattened, popped beach balls or a tattered gardening glove. I have done several sweeps to get rid of the detritus that’s around, but things keep getting literally unearthed, like all the empty shampoo bottles that you get with home hair color kits we found in the side yard. Why do you hoard those? And why do you then put them into the side yard?? The chickens have done a lot to scratch up odd bits of plastic and trash. At first I assumed it was years of messy renters, but we find things with the owner’s children’s name on them, like old membership cards.

There used to be a wood stove hooked up in the basement, long gone now, but the stack of firewood and broken wood from random construction projects and cabinets is still out there. There was another pile of trash near one of the sheds, and a recycling bin full of mixed horror that I will deal with when the weather gets nice.

I’ve lived in poor places, in the North and the South. I like things like wabi sabi and found art and whirligigs and bottle trees, but this trash has got to go. I’m going to Freecycle the now-useless firewood, and I’ll have to see what I can do about the rest. I’ll take some pictures next month so you can see it in all its glory.