Entrenching Tools

Old Friend

Any infantryman will tell you they have a love/hate relationship with his entrenching tool.  That little shovel is called upon to dig fighting positions as well as a thousand other minor tasks including service as a last ditch weapon.  When I left the Army I was kind of looking forward to never having to dig again (not that I dug a lot of holes near the end of my career – other than figuratively speaking).  Little did I realize that my wife had designs on utilizing my well honed burrowing skills in her ruthless garden expansion campaign.

Every year as spring rolls around I find myself digging up sod as yet another section of the lawn falls to her insatiable desire to plant more flowers.  Last night I was planning on finishing up her latest target area when she emerged from the garage with a length of white rope to mark out yet another objective – cue the heart sinking.

My Wife Marking Out Her Latest Victim

Apparently one of her existing gardens has tall plants that need to be moved to the back and vice versa.  To accomplish that it only made sense to double the size of the garden.  I got to work on that while she completed her annual task of creating the hanging baskets for the front porch.  I complain about the work but I’m always amazed at the result – she’s got real talent.

Me and the Aftermath

My Wife's Reluctant Photo with her Flower pots

Buddy did his part by keeping an eye on me and counseling any joggers that passed by.  He earned his way inside when he tried to participate in the neighbor’s ball game.

Buddy Last Night Keeping an Eye on Things

I’m not the only one in the neighborhood digging though.  I’ve written earlier about the downhill house construction that continues with a roof starting to take shape amidst the mounds of dirt.  This weekend similar mounds of earth appeared uphill where something else is being built.  It’s too early to tell but it might be another house, so I’m surrounded by piles of dirt – almost like being back in an infantry defensive position, although less well camouflaged. 

Downhill - Roof Going Up

Uphill Piles of Dirt

The Uphill Project

We were both exhausted when we headed in to watch the Red Sox to see how they responded to their lost weekend in Texas.  They looked equally lost in the early innings but rallied for an extra inning win despite the further deterioration of their once vaunted relief corps.  The unlikely hero was Stephen Drew who before last night was approaching his brother “Nancy” in the hearts of Sox fans.  A solid win coupled with a signature Bruins win in hockey crazed Toronto – a good, if ibuprofen laced, night.

Not-Nancy Gets Mobbed

I finished up my latest excursion into the extremely troubling world of Chuck Pahlaniuk by reading his most famous work, Fight Club.  I found the book in the basement with my daughter’s stuff when I was cleaning up this past winter and finally tackled it.  I’ve seen the movie so I knew what the big twist was which robbed a little bit of the emotional impact.  This was one of Pahlaniuk’s earliest works and you can see he was a little less polished than in some of his later works.  I hesitate to use the word “polished” about anything he writes because it is always so raw and visceral.  I liked the way he takes on modern society and the “neutering” of political correctness in this book but he makes his points, as usual, by driving a railroad spike through the reader’s forehead – typical Pahlaniuk – I loved it.