I have been outside for a month. (Okay, not literally.) I come in out of the yard/garden/flower beds and collapse on the sofa after a shower. I congratulate you, John, on mowing. Our less-than-a-year-old mower went belly-up last week and is now in queue for a fix-up at the Cass County John Deere Implement Dealership. If it had been a normal repair we would have taken advantage of their 2 year in home warranty, but nothing in our lives is ever normal.

The landlord mowed the pasture and much of our yard with a 3-point mower towed by his full-sized tractor. Our part of the yard takes us two days to mow and it took him half an hour more or less. Well, half an hour after he tinkered with the tractor for half an hour.

We have lost (dead or dying) about 2/3 of everything perennial we have planted in the yard over the last 8 years. I think the neighbor wack-o sociopath made good on her promise to spray weed killer. I can't really afford the money to replace it all and my body is certainly not up to the work.

A cop friend of Joe's suggested claymore mines. I am pretty close to devastation. All I can do is pray for her and keep my temper. I cannot prove a thing, but the damage is too wide-spread to be anything but vandalism. Makes me want to be a hermit.