Yup.

Tomorrow is the two-year anniversary of the day we closed on our first home. It's hard to believe we've been living in this house for two whole years. I'm still getting used to the idea of being a homeowner and the accompanying responsibilities and obligations.

We've been talking seriously about remodeling our kitchen. We have no intentions of undertaking that project ourselves. I need to contact some contractors to get an idea of what we can and cannot do and how much it's going to cost.

Our yard is sloooowly getting back into shape after one Spring and Summer of neglect and a Fall and Winter drought in 2005. It appears the clover was not affected by the drought: it's back with a vengeance! Last weekend, I walked around the yard spreading "Weed & Feed" on the lawn with this little hand-cranked spreader. Results after 5 days: both the grass and the weeds look green and full. Hell. I guess green is good. I was actually worried that 90 percent of my yard would wilt and die. From across the street it probably looks okay.

Kim told me we needed some kind of fertilizer [preferably non-chemical] and some mulch for our plant and garden beds. So after work one evening, I headed to the nearest "big box" home center where I encountered a 50-yard long wall lined with stacks of bags containing countless varieties of crap [figuratively and literally] for nourishing your lawn and garden. After 45 minutes of pacing back and forth perusing the various products, I loaded a cart with some bags of peat humus. It met Kim's criteria and it was cheap. Now onto the mulch. I had my choice of pine bark mulch, black bark mulch, red colored mulch, organically grown Texas cedar mulch . . . and so on. At this point I decided to call Kim on my cell to get her opinion. I think we went with the fair trade, cruelty-free cedar mulch, or something like that. Our yard now smells like cedar.

One thing that caught my eye [and, eventually, my concern] was Dillo Dirt, a product of the City of Austin. The city uses lawn and tree trimmings and old Christmas trees collected at curbside, combined with "treated sewage sludge," to create Dillo Dirt. According to the City of Austin website, the composting process generates heat sufficient to "virtually eliminate human and plant pathogens." They also claim it meets EPA standards for "unrestricted use" in vegetable gardens. Uh huh. Well I read the little disclaimer on the bag of Dillo Dirt at the store. To summarize, it says even though the composting process "virtually eliminates" the crappy badness, you might want to wear some gloves and something over your head when handling Dillo Dirt. By the way, we really don't recommend it for vegetable gardens [!]. Don't worry about it, fellas.

Last weekend, I also picked up a gas-powered weed whacker/trimmer. With minimal assembly and a spot of oil and some gas, I had the thing up and running in about 15 minutes. And I quickly remembered that I never liked operating these things. When I was a teenager, my dad had a couple of electric Weedeater trimmers. I think he asked me to trim with them once or twice, and let's just say we both decided that was not the wisest or safest idea. They aren't as easy to operate as it would seem. There are no wheels to guide you or to maintain the trimming height. It's just a 15-pound wand with a mini-motorcycle engine on one end and a virtually invisible cutting line spinning at many thousand RPM on the other. It takes strength and finesse [and long pants and safety glasses] to operate these machines correctly. I am happy to report that I was starting to get the hang of it right about the time I finished trimming, last Sunday.

Eat your heart out, Hank Hill.