Bush whacking

Had a really productive weekend. Spent all day Sunday outside (the weather was perfect, and this was the plan) clearing out the landscaping. Photos on flickr. It was very satisfying, and I fixed up a bunch of the downspouts. Apparently the people who cut the grass for our neighborhood enjoy running over the downspouts, making them utterly useless. So I busted out the grinder, cut them back and threw down some splash pans. It's supposed to rain this week, so I figured I should stop letting water creep in under our house.

Tonight before Pittsburgh plays I'll go buy some more stones and dirt and finish clearing out some overgrown bushes around the driveway. I filled up a half-dozen of those lawn bags and I suspect two more are coming tonight.

Made my first trip to Mulhall's here in Omaha. It's a lawn and garden store. For whatever reason, I felt calm and content walking in there. Maybe it was the plants, maybe it was the likeness to Stauffer's -- but about 4x bigger. It was probably also the guy who loads your car trying to find out which rocks I bought and then saying, well, I think this is it. To which I replied, well, yeah, I just need small rocks like this.'Like this? Yep. Ok, here you go! And then they threw in a mostly full open bag of topsoil when I bought six bags.

The weekend was also great thanks to Pitt's 4OT win against Notre Dame. That's some tenacity. Now only if Texas would have won ... oh well.