...and boy does she hold a grudge.

I had to leave town while the worst part was done - the complete removal of the three beautiful twisty trees from the driveway. (The "former neighbors" referred to in the video. You can see them in the closing shot. They're gone now.) I returned from my trip, horrified, and in tears. I knew I would. The house just looks so...so...nekkid. Exposed. This house liked to be hidden behind those trees. It really enjoyed it, this much I know. So now the house looks and feels uneasy without it's protective cloak of leaves. I know we had to do it, but it doesn't make accepting it any easier. And it doesn't mean I have to like it.

So back to the grudge. After the workmen got stung by the angry yellowjackets (that I swear did not exist on my property until the day the workers showed up), then cracked a large picture window, and one guy did get knocked off of a limb but was saved by his lifeline, things seemed to calm down for a bit while I went on the aforementioned 3-day trip to DC. Then I came home. The guys had also (generously, for free) cut down a bunch of scrubby brush and vines that were strangling the life out of deliberate plantings in the backyard, and left everything right where they cut it. So the yard looked pretty much like it did after tropical storm Fay blew through. Having tired of writing large checks to workmen, the other half and I decided to clear the yard ourselves and drag all the brush to the front yard where they could collect it next week. A few times during this process it occurred to me that I should find my workboots and change them for the croc-like nothings I was sporting. But noooooooooooooo. I didn't.

And so, inevitably, I stepped on a rusty nail.

Of course it penetrated the rubber non-shoe, and my hoof-like foot bottom (must've been some nail!). Actually, it was a roofing nail. Which makes sense, as the house was re-roofed when we bought it 4 or 5 months ago, and I had seen a roofing nail or two elsewhere on the property. Silly me for not wearing my steel-bottomed jungle boots. I also managed to penetrate my plantar fascia, so it hurts more than it probably normally would have, since it wasn't that deep of a hole.

I still think it's a vendetta.

It was partly my own stupidity, yes, but a revenge move nonetheless. I've been stumbling around this planet (typically in non-steel-bottomed boots) rather haphazardly for, oh, a few decades now, and usually nothing too bad happens to me, I'm fairly lucky. Not anymore, it seems. Guess I kind of deserve it, even if I only did it out of self-preservation.

We're planning on re-planting the area, and some others, with trees that will not tower over the houses threateningly, nor throw nuts at our heads, so that will fill in some of the bareness and hopefully prove our mea culpa to mother nature. In the side yard, we'll be planting lots of different types of citrus, whatever can tolerate the Jax pseudo-winter. I hope the bad luck will stop then.

And yes, I did go get a tetanus shot in the arm afterwards, which now hurts worse than the nail hole itself.

Hardy-har-har, mother nature. Very funny.


This is what it looked like in progress. I just realized I don't think I have any pictures of the front of the house all the way from the street before the tree-ectomies. But you can tell even while it was in progress, look how different. So much sun coming in to that driveway for the first time in 20 years. Sounds like a positive thing. We'll see.