I like gardening. I like plants and growth and life. I like yardwork. I fantasize of a beautiful, private backyard, real Secret Garden-like, with nooks and crannies, hidden worlds to be discovered behind overgrown vines or under long draping willow trees. I’d even go so far as to say I crave that sort of place in my life.

But I am beginning to lose hope that I will ever have it.

Over the years our backyard has seen some good times and some bad times.

The time below (circa summer 2010) was good-ish; I’ll admit the fog was pretty and a little bit romantic:

But let’s not kid ourselves: the bad has far outweighed the good:

And sometimes really really outweighed it—that weed was six feet tall:

Yet even after all that our backyard has lately sunk to pretty extreme lows:

The picture above effectively captures the general state of everything in my life right now, which I will summarize in one succinct word: half-A.

Note, if you will, the fence posts standing tall and fence-less as they’ve stood for the last two years since we originally knocked down our fence because it was falling over anyway and we meant to replace it with a lovely white vinyl one (see just a bit further back to our neighbors’ far lovelier [and finished!] fence) only we failed to think of two things before we took a sledghammer to the old brown fence: 1) that white vinyl fences cost a lot of money, and 2) we don’t have a lot of money. Also that although the fence part came down easily enough, the actual posts were cemented in and not coming out without the help of some sort of tractor, which of course would cost money to rent, which money, as noted in 2), we simply didn’t have.

Oops.

Then note, if you will, the random patches of dead and cut-down trees scattered throughout the yard as they’ve been for the past four weeks, just as we left them after one hearty weekend full of cheerful ambitions and chain saw oil, followed by a slew of rainy weekends, out-of-town weekends, scheduled-to-work weekends, and weekends during which we simply couldn’t muster the energy required to peel ourselves off the living room sofa and finish the task of clearing up the dead trees.

Note also the tiny visible strip of poured concrete footing, poured years before we ever bought this house by previous owners with visions of grandeur and a detached garage. Also note: NO GARAGE IN SIGHT.

I do believe this property is haunted.

We were doomed to half-A-ness from the start.

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