The weather up here has improved dramatically. Which is to say that I have been outside with the boys every afternoon, and they sometimes can take their coats off. Most of our expansive lawn is actually mud. Grass grown through it to give the illusion of solid ground, but when I go down to prune the thorny bushes I need to wear boots.

The thorny bushes are impossible, and all of my frustrations go into ripping them up. These things... they are alive, in that they attack you and cling to you. I try to throw one away and it end up wrapped around my arm. Each cut with the big pruning shears brings a number of thorns tumbling on top of me, tangling in my clothes and hair. They snake through the grass and also reach out high, tangling themselves in the branches of the overhead trees. I am trying to find their roots, so I can clear out as much as I can from the source, but I get the feeling I may as well be filling the Grand Canyon with a bucket. I have been working out there all week, and even though it's only maybe 30 minutes a day, it should at least LOOK A LITTLE DIFFERENT. But it doesn't. It looks exactly the same.