Hey, look, a cucumber! Remember how I was saying that it turned out that my cucumbers were watermelons? Turns out that I was totally wrong, and at least one of the plants is, in fact, a cucumber. Apparently cucumber flowers and watermelon flowers look a lot alike–I figured five-petaled yellow flowers were going to be watermelons. Guess that means that I can stop pinching them all off, then. (Because unlike watermelon, cucumbers are not disgusting.)

Speaking of watermelon, there you go. I took a picture of it, finally. It’s maybe the size of a golf ball. I’m hoping that I don’t kill it, because Maura is in love with the goddamn thing and checks on it every morning on our way to daycare. I’m a little worried, because everyone has told me that watermelon can be finicky, and Maura does not deal well with things that get, as she puts it, “RUINED”.

“RUINED” means that there will quite probably be tears, anger, crossed arms, slammed doors, and complaints that nobody loves her and everything is just RUINED FOREVER. One particularly memorable day, the kids down the street couldn’t play, and this means that her life was RUINED and by not forcing them to play with her, I had “broken the love” between Maura and I. It was possibly the saddest thing that I’ve ever seen.

At some point she’s going to develop coping skills that have evolved past tears and attempts at self-injury by throwing herself against the floor repeatedly, right? (Please, please please.)

This is my squash. I think that it’s sick. I’m pretty sure, for example, that it’s not supposed to have that white mildew-y stuff on it. Anyone know what that is? It’s only on the older leaves of the plant–the newer ones look find. If no one knows any better, I may just try to strip off the older leaves and see what happens. I’m not wedded to a crop of table squash, really, since I can buy a giant Hubbard squash for $3, then roast and freeze it.

Finally, guys, the amazing part.

That’s the before shot. Notice, for example, that you can’t see the fence between the cemetery and my yard. The people who lived here before us were pretty good about keeping up the inside of the house, but the outside was really left go. The leaves that you see near the ground aren’t, as a rule, baby trees, but are limbs that have been unpruned for so long that they’ve grown to touch the ground. The worst was the one on the left of the picture–the top of the limb was on top of our neighbors’ garage; the bottom was actually running along the grass.

This is the after shot.

Okay, I hurt my foot (lost balance and stepped hard on a pointy chunk of concrete) and had to go to the ER to make sure that it wasn’t broken, but outside of that, this was pretty amazingly not as hard as I expected it to be.

To be fair, it was a combination of a bowsaw, sawzall, and axe that finally got it. The axe was unexpected–I went over to my soon-to-be-moving neighbor’s house to see if he had a chainsaw that I could borrow for a minute, and he said no, but then asked if I wanted to borrow an axe.

Guys, axes are awesome! I have to buy an axe as soon as possible. (Don’t get me wrong; the axe is not more awesome than my sawzall. But it’s still pretty awesome, and also relatively cheap.)

Anyhow, the axe and I went out back and killed the hell out of that branch, and my backyard is rather less like a jungle and more like a backyard. Next up, I have to figure out what to do with all the branches and logs in the backyard. Should any of you know anyone with a wood chipper, let me know.