NAT NESTS: OPERATION BRAVERMAN BACKYARD

Moscow has always been beautiful in the fall but I think this one takes the cake for longest, crispest, perfectest . . . bestest fall ever. Our area of town has the most gorgeous mature trees. You don't want to live here in a windstorm, but otherwise, dang straight it's pretty. The random 1800s houses dotted in between the random 1920s houses in between the random 1950s ranches gives the streets out here this funky haphazard feeling that I really love, and the fact that NOBODY rakes anything is making my entire life right now. Leaves shin feet high indeed.

Another thing I remember about Moscow in the fall is that it precedes the nastiest thing the universe has ever invented, Moscow in the WINTER. Ackkkkk turn around three times and spit. It gets dark here at 3 the minute Daylight Savings kicks in. It snows and then it ices and then it snows and let me tell you, the leaves stop looking so pretty by then. Sludge, gray, poop. Blech. And  you're trapped in it, you know, because you can't go anywhere. Like that pass in Seven Brides For Seven Brothers! You gotta wait for the thaw, man. 

I don't know I just find I am relating to that movie a lot these days? 

One year after driving to Portland for Christmas, we came home to a giant wall of snow in our driveway from all the snowplows that had come through. It was taller than our car. Like, keeping the white walkers out, that kind of tall. We had to park in the middle of the road and shovel out an opening so we could get inside. These aren't the kinds of things I tell you to complain, no no, this is not about sympathy. This is about BRAGGING. I SURVIVED THIS.

Anyway, so instead I'm doing what you do and pretending that winter's never happening, and I'm calling it Operation Braverman Backyard. You watch Parenthood, right? More than the cancer story lines I'm over here bawling over that landscaping. And the twinkle lights!! 

Maybe if I string up enough twinkle lights Moscow will just, like, cancel winter this year. 

Look out there's about to be a million pictures of my back yard right now. It's a progress report! 

Fire pit I'm laughably bad at lighting, check! 

Chickens pooping on everything, double check! 

We did a little test run for Huck's birthday party this week, and aside from the fact that none of us could get a good fire going . . . haha, it was a success!

We still need a picnic table, and about a million more twinkle lights. But we're getting somewhere.

The end for crying out loud!