1) People are always sharing this little sign on Facebook, “Discipline is good for kids! Share if you were DISCIPLINED as a child!” Why? What does that prove about you, or your parents? Notice that this does not imply that the discipline was useful in any way. Maybe you’re a serial killer. I don’t know you. No, no more of that. How about this: SHARE if your parents made you do yard work as a kid, so that as an adult, you could look around at what closely resembles an abandoned field next to a Walmart parking lot, sigh deeply, go out to Target and get the good trashbags – outdoor, 30 gallon capacity, it’s all they have – return, and spend the next three hours engaged in what often feels like a futile battle with the knowledge that it is certainly not, in fact, futile, because you did the yard every fall in New England with your family and every year it always got done and it looked perfectly fine. SHARE SHARE SHARE.

2) There was broken glass under piles of dead leaves that must have been there for a decade. Who were these previous tenants? Savages.

3) PILES OF DEAD LEAVES ARE WHERE THE MICE LIVE. UNACCEPTABLE.

4) At various points over a decade or more, people have attempted to tame this 20×20 ft wilderness with the following: decorative concrete, bricks, cement blocks. It is sweet. Past tenants who dreamed of a lovely backyard in which to spend time with friends and loved ones: I salute you, and I go forth in your honor and in your memory.

5) Final tally: 665 gallons worth of trashbags filled to maximum capacity with leaves, sticks, and assorted debris.

6) We measure trashbags in gallons, which is a foolish invitation to fill them with liquid. This seems worth reconsidering.