Aw, rats.
We had some. In our grape vine!
So today was grapevine trimming day. The Lawyers came over this morning and we cut down all the non-woody growth on the vine, which should be its natural wintering state anyway. Found out that we didn’t have an infestation by any name, but definite evidence of prolonged hang-out-itude, so it’s good we were on top of it to dissuade any rodents from wintering with us. We also took down the very poorly placed hackberry that was dangling threateningly over our neighbor’s yard. It seems to be a volunteer from many years ago, but it was growing right against the fence and in between two obviously planted birch trees it seems to have been choking out. Most (all?) the hackberries in Davis are unhealthy anyway, so it was sort of a matter of time before this one got all yucky and dripped sap and goo all over. This is why our neighbor wanted it cut down!
Anyway, it does make us the tree-killin’ neighbors. Our local busybody (and resident 8-year-old) was rather perturbed about the grape vine (though it’s in our back yard…) though hasn’t seemed to notice anything about the tree in the front the city cut down last week, nor the hackberry we took out. He’s selectively protective, though I do have to allow the theory that since his best friends used to live in our house he has fond memories of the grapevine and/or palm tree. It is a little suspect, I completely admit, that we moved in here two months ago and have lost three and a half (if you’re counting all the grapevine we took out) trees. The city tree took everyone by surprise, though, since it turns out they didn’t tell anyone they were going to cut it down. We just came home and it was gone! Sounds like (from the Lawyers’ side) we’ll have some new trees in soon. The city owes us one, too!
Other than that, it was papers, papers, papers today. Finished the second section’s worth of homework from this week, and read the paper I set aside for myself today. Should have perhaps done a little more with my evening, but I was feeling quite off post dinner and decided to take the night off. Been spending a good amount of time getting Firefox all gussied up since I realized the new Ask doesn’t get along with Opera. I was getting a bit tired of having to switch between the two for all my Flash based stuff as well… but I’m not sure how long the Firefox trial will go. Just giving it a whirl for now.
Big small day tomorrow. It’s Monday, my blessedly least intensive day, but it’s also the day the undergrads need to turn in their first essays! Hopefully that won’t be too much chaos, but you never know. I’ve already had a few last-minute panickers, but nothing too intense. I’m more worried about the content of the essays and grading them than anything else. Plus I have a lot of homework to do tomorrow… Lewis and I need to whip up an “interview schedule” for our socioling project, and I’ve got more exciting reading to do. Egad! It’s certainly never dull around here.