We know Bix is growing up because his poops are now giant, solid brown logs. This morning, he willfully deposited one right in front of the orange, dust-coated cement mixer that’s stationed in our side yard. I wanted to cheer him on, but I’ve learned I ought to keep these sorts of mean-spirited thoughts to myself. That is, when I am not posting them for the Internets to read on my blog.

I wanted to cheer Bix on because he was performing the physical manifestation of my recent feelings toward the accumulation of… well… crap in the yard. The cement mixer is just the beginning. Next to the cement mixer—a new addition as of last night—there’s a table saw, its safety handle broken and dangling by a dozen colored plastic wires. To operate the table saw now, in its special Danger Mode, one has to hold the saw pretty much anywhere except on its plastic safety handle, thus exposing one’s delicate human tissues to the scary, sharp, speeding rotary blade. Nonetheless, the saw is in daily use. Just past the saw is a small shed, which I believe in an earlier incarnation was a protective structure under which one’s garbage and recycling would live. These days, the shed houses the cabinetry previously torn out of the kitchen. The cabinet doors have been ripped off of its face, and cabinet drawers—from elsewhere in the old kitchen, I guess—shoved in the gaps. The entire thing is painted bright orange and yellow and is filled with a jumbled collection of tools, gloves, tape, cobwebs, and other renovation-related items. A bright green tarp hangs over the face of the shed in order to protect its contents from the elements.

Sure, the house is in various states of construction and remodeling, and of course we need those tools, when we can find them in the mix. But the problem doesn’t end there.

Just outside the shed is a 1970s-era hexagonal kitchen table with chrome legs, its wood-laminate top peeling from repeated exposure to the elements. (It does rain here occasionally.) One brown vinyl swivel chair is tucked beneath the table. The other three chairs are parked haphazardly around the lawn. One chair is the lucky depository of two canvas work jumpsuits that were used as protection in the attic insulation project of two weeks ago. The other has had a red towel on it for as long as I can remember.

Elsewhere in the yard are multitudinous bicycles, bicycle parts, bike pumps, work gloves, a motorcycle, a soccer ball, an upside-down kids’ wading pool, a small plastic garbage bin filled with dog poop, a spent ten gallon paint bucket filled with rancid water and an old mop, an old gas grill, two propane tanks, a door with a hole cut in it, a couple of cans of vegetables, a transistor radio, dead plants in pots, and various plumbing pipes and parts in a gangly pile.

Over all this is a light covering of yellow and green leaves that have fallen from the paradise trees that line the property.

And up at the top of the driveway there is… wait for it… a broken-down car. It could be worse. After all, the car is a Subaru.