Rob was astonished to see a black squirrel in our yard the other day, saying he hadn't seen one before. I haven't seen one since living at my parents' house where every year we'd have at least one running around- one year there were two. I recently saw our little black squirrel scurry along the fence. It's a nice change of pace from all the bunnies who eat my flowers.
Today was very productive for me. Not only did I rake leaves this morning (a couple of older gentlemen drove by in some sort of hobby car and called out "you missed one!"), but I also fired up our hedge trimmer and tried as best I could to round the bushes in our front yard. While not perfect, at the very least it looks like we care a little bit. I'll have to practice more next year. Then I pulled up a few weeds that had made themselves comfortable in our landscaping areas. A junebug threatened to climb up my arm and into my shirt, and a grasshopper took a giant leap off of my elbow. There are also boxelder bugs all over the front of our house, and I'm pretty sure their one wish is to get tangled in my hair for the chance to see me do my crazy there's-a-bug-on-me! dance. I'll have to call Rob's mom over to get rid of them since that seems to be a very satisfying pastime of hers. I hear that she went on a bug-killing spree yesterday.
I also baked a cheesecake for Rob. He worked most of the day and has just left for a trip to Home Depot to get some fertilizer for the yard.