Timmmmmberrrr!

Here it is again. Our new home. But in this picture, I want to draw your attention to the huge palm tree on the left of the front door. That simple beautiful palm tree (or I guess I should say Palm TREES because there are two), has given us SO much trouble.



Admire it's beauty. The branches sway gently in the breeze, and below it the roots grow into our main sewer pipe, and cause human poop to come up and out of our shower drain.

Not to mention, the first week of home ownership, my husband's family formed a small army to tackle the house and help get it ready for us to live in. Now I wasn't home when this happened, but they thought it would be nice to cut the bundles of berries off the trees. (You can see one of the bundles in the picture below.) The tallest member of the group went up the ladder, clipped the stem of the berry bundle, and when it came crashing down, six rats came running out.

The trees MUST go. But money is tight, so we need to deal with them for just a bit longer.



Cut to today. I'm very fortunate to marry a guy with a great family. Everyone is always so willing to help out when we've needed it, and today was no exception. We are currently dealing with a clogged kitchen sink (Are you surprised? I'm not.), and my husband's older brother offered to help us fix it. Well, we weren't so lucky with that, but on his way out he looked at our demonic palm trees and offered to come back and trim them up a bit. And he did! He did an AWESOME job. I love this action shot I got of him throwing the fond from the roof onto the ground.



And here is all the crap that got cut down. Can you believe it? Now, I was hoping to see a rat today because I certainly see their poop every morning when I water the plants around the base of the tree, but all we found was an empty nest. That rat sure is going to be surprised when it comes home to find nothing tonight. Then again, I'll probably be surprised to come home and see that a rat has made it's new home in our garage.