As a homeowner, there is always something that needs to be done. When jobs are put off for years at a time, the list of things that can be done is endless. So, every now and again I just have to get to one of those jobs and this past weekend it was trimming tree branches.

I noticed a few weeks ago that some of my trees had grown so much since I last trimmed them (never) that they were growing through my fence. I had too much shade and it was difficult to tell where one tree ended and another began. Branches which once hit me in the head when I cut the grass now scratch my arms and back. I was tired of explaining my lawn mower/tree injuries, so something had to be done.

Out I went with my trusty tree pruner, aided by my 5-year-old son. A tree pruner is irresistible to a 5-year-old and I had to contend with a lot of "Daddy, can I try, can I try, can I try???"

The first tree is a bizarre collection of branches that have grown out of the side of what I believed was a dead tree stump. In short order, the strange tree-like thing was chopped back to a manageable size and shape.

The next tree was a snap and I was ready to tackle the giant evergreen in the corner of the property. I hadn't realized how long these branches had grown and I knew I had lots of work to do. I started on the bottom branches and figured any 20 foot long branch should be 15 feet. Branches that pointed directly at my face would lose a few feet. Branches that extended 10 feet over the fence would be told to come back home.

My pruner was put to the test and it wasn't long before I was covered in tree sap up to my elbows. Piles of branches were on the ground and I knew it was time to take a step back and admire my handy work...

Oh God.

What had I done?

My giant evergreen tree was now a ridiculous looking mess and it was all my fault. I had obviously cut off way too much. I was in shock. How did I not realize what I was doing? When did I get a hand saw? Where was my son when I needed someone to blame???

I guess it's not the worst thing ever. In 30 or 40 years no one will ever know.

As faithful readers of my blog will know (hi mom), I'm having some problems with weeds. So, the other day I went into the local garden centre to ask them what I might do about this problem.

I avoided all teenage employees as I entered the store and found someone who looked like she might actually own a home and be a weed expert. I told her my problem and asked what I should do and she replied, "Get a rabbit." I'm not big on sarcastic responses from strangers who are paid to help me, but I faked a laugh as best I could. Without saying another word, she walked away and I assumed I was to follow her or we were about to take a smoke break together outside. She stopped near the front counter and showed me a bottle of something called Sarritor. "We've been recommending this to all of our customers," she said. "It's expensive," she continued, obviously deviating from any management-approved script.

The can says that I am to spray the product directly on my dandelions and they will die. One can is good for 750 plants, so I figure I will need about 100 cans. The product is only designed for dandelions so the other weeds that have taken up shop on my lawn are safe for now.

I asked the charming woman what I should do if the Sarritor doesn't work. She said I could scrape my lawn and start over. She said there's a tool I would need to rent from a different store. No further mention of rabbits.

I decided to try the Sarritor and will come back to buy some grass seed and topsoil next weekend to see if I can build up what's left of my lawn.

I think I'll seek out a teenage employee for that transaction.

I don't pretend to be on the cutting edge of technology. I was 30 years old before I sent my first email. In university, I ignored a professor who wanted to introduce us to something he called "the internet."

But a few years ago, I bought a wireless router for my home so I could connect wirelessly with my laptop. This year, while at school, I discovered the world of wireless while on someone else's network and I've become like a kid in a candy store.

I used to go to Starbucks because I like paying too much for coffee and wondering when those comfy chairs are ever available. Now, however I can enjoy the experience of standing, drinking expensive coffee AND surfing the internet! I pretend I'm doing something important (do unimportant people even go to Starbucks??), but I'm not. It's enough for me to simply be connected while drinking expensive coffee.

For fun, I'll open my laptop while sitting outside a business in my car. I'll attempt to find a wireless network and have discovered that they are EVERYWHERE! I could care less who they belong to and attempt to connect to any and all networks that are foolish enough to let me in. "The network you are attempting to connect to is an unsecured network, connect anyway?" I am warned. Are you kidding me? I'm sitting in my car, attempting to connect to a free internet connection. You think I'm worried about security? It is to laugh...

I've become so accustomed to finding free connections that the suggestion that I might pay to use the internet anywhere on the planet has become a joke. Free wireless has become my right as a human being and there is no turning back.

I haven't yet, but assume that the next step in my wireless evolution is to complain loudly when I find locations where no wireless network exists.

You have been warned.

sou-ve-nir

noun
1.a usually small and relatively inexpensive article given, kept, or purchased as a reminder of a place visited, an occasion, etc.; memento.
2.a memory.

Before I left on my weekend trip to New Orleans, my son asked me if I would bring him back a souvenir, specifically a toy. I was surprised by the request, largely because I didn't know he knew the meaning of the word.
But I wasn't going to let him down, so I made time to pick something up for both kids and my wife before I flew back home. Of course the time I made for this was at the airport, but I've always thought that if the name of the game is to get something that is small, portable and clearly from that city, then the airport is the perfect place. I had never been to the New Orleans airport before, and realized quickly that I was limited to buying souvenirs in one small gift shop or hoping that my kids would enjoy the latest issue of Men's Health.
My wife's souvenir jumped out at me first. She would get a coffee mug. She can't seem to visit any place for more than 24 hours without buying a mug to remind her of the time spent there (and the splendid coffee?), so this was a simple choice. Romantic? No. Practical? Yes. Do I have room for one more mug? I don't have room for my existing mug collection, so what's one more?
Next was my daughter. She's fascinated by different cultures and studies all things strange and unusual until she becomes an expert. Aha! A creepy little casket-like thing with a Voodoo doll inside would be perfect! I'm sure it wasn't a perfect souvenir for too many eight-year-old girls, but my daughter has always been her own kid.
I was now faced with my first tough decision-is my son going to want the same souvenir as his sister, even though his interests are so very different? I thought back to the original "Daddy, can you bring me back a souvenir...a toy?" and knew that caskets and Voodoo dolls were not in his thoughts. Unfortunately there was nothing he would enjoy in the store and I hoped that I was heading to a larger airport in Houston.
As it turns out, I was. Strangely though, there wasn't a lot of good souvenir shopping at that airport either and thoughts of buying something in Toronto entered my head. There had to be something a five-year-old boy would want and there it was...a magic Spiderman colouring book where the drawings come to life once the magic marker is used. I also picked up a pack of playing cards with pictures and fun facts related to the SPACE program. He loves space ships and loves to play cards with me...if the obvious references to the great state of Texas could be ignored, it was perfect.
Everyone loved their little gifts. My daughter said the Voodoo doll was "SO cool!!!" My son was so happy to see the cards, he ripped the box apart and hasn't stopped asking to play with me since I came home. We've played many games of "Go Fish" or "Goldfish" as he calls it. I've yet to beat him, but suspect that's unimportant.
My wife has made pot after pot of coffee and drinks only from her new mug until she shakes. Ok, maybe that hasn't happened, but she really does like the mug.

It’s 6:40 a.m. and I’m sitting in the last seat of a torpedo-shaped plane which will soon fly to Newark, NJ. I have now been up for more than four hours and just getting to this moment has been an adventure.
I was up at 2:30 a.m., out the door by 3:00 a.m. and arrived at the Toronto Airport at 4:00 a.m., exactly two hours before my scheduled flight to New Orleans by way of Houston. It was at this moment that things started to unravel for me...
My flight is with Continental Airlines and before I left the house, I checked the e-ticket to see if the terminal information was shown. It was not, but I told myself that I’d figure it out when I got to the airport. Mistake number one. There is a large sign at the entrance to the airport which shows all the airlines which fly out of Toronto and their respective terminals. At 80 kph, Continental and Air India look surprisingly alike and I was instantly on the wrong track. I guessed Terminal 1 and found myself a parking spot which was $10 more per day than I had seen on the website. I parked on level 6 and wisely took a picture of the level and area with my BlackBerry camera. I took the elevator down to the terminal level and thought I should use the help phone to see which terminal I should be in. They told me I was supposed to be in Terminal 3 and could walk, take a shuttle or re-park my car at the proper terminal. I was told I wouldn’t be asked to pay when I left this parking garage as I had been there less than 10 minutes.
I got off the elevator at level 6 and tried to find my car. It was as though I had walked into a different parking garage where my area no longer existed, but everyone drove silver Toyota Corollas, none of them mine. I don’t even know how this was possible, but I was feeling some stress.
As I had wandered around lost for a while, they told me I owed $6 when I tried to leave the garage. That seemed like a rip-off, so I asked the young lady if she was serious??? After a phone call to her supervisor, she and Mr. Big decided they could reduce the charge to $3. Resisting the urge to throw the money at her, I left unhappy, in search of Terminal 3.
Instead of finding the terminal, I somehow left the airport property and was driving into nothingness. Seeing a Park and Fly location, I thought I was saved. There were no entrances to be found, so I drove around this parking fortress, my heart rate rising by the second, and eventually found what I believe to be the only way in. It turns out, this was the valet area where I leave my keys with the car and I decided to stay when I was offered the same rate as regular Park and Fly. At some point my brain had stopped working and I temporarily forgot my postal code when talking to the attendant.
The shuttle bus driver was a chatty guy and he told me that people are forever asking him to go to their terminal first, because they’ve planned their time so poorly. He said the only time he agreed was when a guy gave him $50 and I wondered if I was supposed to be bribing him too?
Finally arriving at Terminal 3, I proceeded to the automated check in kiosk as a way of avoiding the line of nine million people in front of me. I was surprised to find out that my checked bag was going to cost me $28, but carried on with about seven pieces of newly printed paper.
I didn’t have a tag on my luggage, so I asked for one at the desk and they gave me some stickers for this purpose. I fully expect the sticker to fall off and my bag to disappear much like the mysterious area of parking level 6.
I walked into the customs area and knew I was in serious trouble. There were another nine million people in line and swear I could hear the theme for the TV show 24 in my ears. I began to sweat and realized that bringing a jacket was just dumb. The line moved quickly and I hoped I might still make my flight. The urge to begin and end every conversation with “I’m going to miss my f*&^ing flight” was almost too much to resist, but I remained calm.
I had made it through customs, but now had to go through security screening. There were- you guessed it- another nine million people in this line. Well, actually it was the very same nine million people I had seen all morning, but everyone was quite a bit more pissed off by this point. I started asking if I could be moved to the front of the line because I was about to miss my f*&^ing flight, but no one allowed it.
When I reached the front of the line and began emptying my pockets, the woman in front of me took off her shoes. She may not have been transporting farm animals in her bag, but her feet had obviously been around them recently and I thought, “Dear God, do I really need that right now??” I put my jacket back on with my passport and all my paperwork in my hand before realizing that it wouldn’t fit through the end of the sleeve. I pulled my arm out and my pieces of paper started to fall out onto the floor. I swung wildly to catch them before they landed and I must have looked like a complete buffoon. If it hadn’t been me, I would have laughed.
My fellow passengers picked up on my plight and told me “You won’t miss your flight-you’ve already checked your bags, they’ll wait for you.”
They were wrong.
I ran like a maniac through the airport, reaching my gate about 30 seconds after they had closed the doors. I had been rebooked on a flight to Newark leaving in 30 minutes.
What a morning.

I don’t know what to do.

At some point my lawn became completely overrun by weeds and the only thing I’ve figured out is that I have to do something. What exactly? I don’t know.

I suppose it should be no surprise that I don’t know what to do since it is only by not doing whatever it is I must now do that my lawn has become such a mess. Only by neglecting this problem so consistently could things have become this bad. Extreme ignorance was required over a substantial period of time to get me to this shameful moment.

Last week, I came home to find a flyer stuck in my mailbox from a local lawn care company. On it, they had written “I noticed a lot of weeds and crab grass on your lawn, call us.” I presume this person had gone to some sort of weed school to spot my problems so quickly. I would like to send the flyer back to this company with a note of my own: “I noticed your company is obnoxious,” but likely will just accept their ridicule and move on.

A few years ago, I called someone I knew that had a lawn care company to help me with this problem. He was very happy to spray pesticides on my lawn and for a year I had fewer weeds. It was about this time that the world was talking about the dangers of pesticides, but my friend, the lawn care guy, just scoffed at the naysayers. He had likely been to weed school, but it did seem to me that chemicals that kill plants might be dangerous to the rest of us and should be avoided.

The more I saw my friend frolicking in these same chemicals day in, day out, the more I suspected that in-depth studies were not required to determine the dangers of these chemicals to humans.

My wife decided that we couldn’t continue to spray our lawn in future years because our kids played on that grass and it might also be dangerous to animals. As we don’t have any pets, I suspect she’s worried about squirrels and caterpillars far more than I ever realized. The lawn care guy didn’t call me the following year to ask about renewing my contract. As I didn’t hear any news to suggest it, I don’t believe it was because he had died. Regardless, I was now on my own to take care of my lawn.

I decided that hand pulling my weeds was the answer. I used a garden spade that I found in the garage and got to work. The spade was not overly sharp and far too big for the job, so often I found myself digging a sizeable hole around the area the weed (and quite a bit of grass) had once been. I read somewhere that pulling out only the top of the plant would allow the weed to quickly grow back, so I did my best to pull out the roots. This is especially hard to do with a large, dull garden spade, so it was common place for me to dig tunnels into the sides of my enormous holes to try to get at the roots, which openly mocked me. When I had gone over my lawn once, I was horrified to see that I had somehow missed several million weeds and that my lawn looked like a boot camp for gophers.

My next door neighbour is a helpful guy and without saying “my God man, what are you doing to your lawn?” he gave me a tool he had used successfully to pull his weeds. Over the course of that summer I used the new tool, which made smaller holes, but the weeds continued to pop up.

The next year, I read that the best way to deal with weeds is to choke them out by having a healthy lawn of grass. I bought top soil, fertilizer and grass seed. It turns out that I had actually bought 100 years worth of grass seed, but I figured I could store it in my garage for the rest of the century. One weekend, I rebuilt my lawn with these elements and was out twice a day to water it with my 10 year old sprinkler, which had to be moved 14 times to hit all areas of my odd shaped property. My better half nagged me on a daily basis about the cost of the water I was using, but she had never been to weed school, so her “advice” was worthless. I read somewhere that I needed to water my lawn with one inch of water, twice per day and the best way to measure this was with an empty tuna can. In theory this is a wonderful idea, but as my sprinkler does not drop water like rain, it soon became clear that I wouldn’t gather an inch of water in the can in anything less than a month of watering.

I also bought a different weeding tool that prevented me from being on my hands and knees. This would come in handy when pulling the odd weed which might penetrate my newly formed force field of grass. If my lawn was fuller because of my efforts, it was very difficult to tell. The packages had suggested my lawn would resemble a golf course, but I didn’t see myself charging green fees anytime soon with this lawn. The new tool was better than the hand tools, but that was a small blessing because once again, I was looking at millions and millions of weeds!!!!

It has become very clear to me that many of my neighbours are ignoring the local pesticide ban. Their lawns are weed free and they are not hand pulling weeds every waking second of their lives-a schedule that I have discovered must be maintained for weedlessness. The only lawns which are overrun by weeds are mine, those owned by the city, and properties I presume have been condemned.

I think the ultimate insult in all of this is that I discovered that mice had gotten into my giant bag of grass seed and eaten most of it. I hope my wife is happy that she protected these thieving rodents and all creatures great and small that live in my weed infested lawn. At least someone is getting some enjoyment out of it.