Gardener, I am not

I have been working on the yard in little periods of time. (as long as Jonathan will sit in the stroller while I weed like a crazy lady). I hated to even move the dirt at all in fear that the neighborhood cats would think I was cleaning out their litter box. The dirt was pretty hard, so as I pulled weeds and raked a little, the dirt looked "fresh". I love the look of fresh bark, but I am not getting it this year because I am sick of cleaning up after all the cat poop. (I do not own a cat by the way. In a previous post I told of how I am surrounded by cats, 8 cats next door, 4 cats the other next door, two across the street...etc.) I actually raked up all of the old bark and put it in the recycle bin, hoping that would help. Well, within a 1/2 hour of doing that, I had 4 mounds of cat poop. They saw the freshly raked dirt, and had a hayday. *sigh*.

Anyways...that is not the whole purpose of this post. I have a Japanese Maple tree out front that is so pretty. It is about 3 feet high, and all the branches hang down to the ground so it looks like a big mound of red leaves. I decided to become a gardener/landscaper and trim it up a "little" bit. Well, it is a lot harder than it sounds. I kept going around and trimming a "little" here, and a lot there, trying to get it even. I am sure the neighbors were watching thinking, "just walk away, you'll never get it even". I should have known not to attempt this. I can not even cut bread straight. Every time I go home to visit my mom, she'll yell from the kitchen, "Kristi must be here, the bread is uneven". I now have a Charlie brownish type Maple tree. I finally did walk away after doing some serious cosmetic surgery. Hopefully it will grow back. It'll be interesting to see what Trent says when he gets home. It'll probably be something like, "Looks like you did some yard work today". yup. I sure did.