And today I smell like olive oil

I really, really, really hate yardwork. No, I don't, actually. Let me amend that to say "I really, really, really hate yardwork when I also have to watch three kids."

I wouldn't mind yardwork if I didn't have to stop every two seconds to yell at a kid. "Get out of the street!" "Don't eat those berries! They're poisonous!" "Don't ride your trike down the hill!" (That last one is a real scary one, considering our driveway is a hill of death.)

Our lot is really strange. We live in a ravine. Pretty much, the roof of our house is at street level. We have the steep, scary driveway, and our front yard consists of a huge multi-leved limestone terraced flower bed that faces our house. It would really be a beautiful feature if someone had the time and/or energy and/or motivation to deal with it, but I don't so it looks like crap.

So anyway, I put off yardwork pretty much all summer. Mario did some barebones mowing, but otherwise, we let the weeds take over. We live on a wooded lot, so a weed filled flowerbed pretty much just blends in with the surroundings (at least that's what I tell myself to justify my laziness)

But yesterday I decided to finally attack the weeds, or at least clear them away enough to make way for the new mulch. What we do at our house of 8 gazillion oak trees is shred the leaves with the mower and use the shredded leaves for mulch in the flower beds(this year we got a leaf shredder so I'm actually kind of excited about that) I'm very happy with the oak leaf mulch idea because it is super free, we don't have to worry about disposing of our leaves, and if more leaves get blown into the flower beds during the winter, I don't have to rake them out in the spring. They match!

I pulled out the dead day lillies and hostas and weeds in about half of the terraced area. I was trying to untangle the vines and vines of wild black raspberry that grows everywhere and it was making me crazy. It was all looped into these awful thorny bushes the previous owner planted. Those bushes kept grabbing at me and finally I just grabbed the hacksaw and cut them all down. I felt very she-woman, but I know they'll just grow back to torment me next year.

Today I cleared out the other half, and it sucked. Whoever planned out the terracing was real stupid because there is no way to access most of this without doing some billygoat-ish type of climbing. Anyway, with my climbing, I climbed headfirst into a big cockleburr plant.

My whole head was covered in burrs, but I kept going. I knew if I stopped that I would never go back out to finish it so I just kept going, Medusa hair and all. A couple of hours later, I finally called it quits and went in to take a shower.

Those little suckers (literally) wouldn't come out! My head was a bird's nest of burrs and matted hair. I was very frustrated and near tears, and this close to just grabbing the scissors and going for the Kate Gosselin look when I decided to check online for other options.

There were many sites about getting burrs out of hair...no make that fur. It talked a lot about dogs with burrs, but I figured it was probably good enough. They recommeneded olive oil. So I oiled up my hair, and the burrs came out like that. Awesome. I rewashed my hair again, but I still kind of smell like olive oil. My Sicilian husband is bound to find me irresistable, eh?