2:59

I realize now that I’ve created my own arch-nemesis. He’s a composite of who I imagine were the past owners of my house. My father knows him as “that guy,” “that ass” or some similar reference. He’s 50 years of questionable workmanship and less than perfect yard care personified. Since he’s managed to find so many uses for my time I feel he deserves a name. I’m going to start calling him Daniel.

The other night my father gazed with a mix of amusement and confusion at a crooked downspout extending at a 30 degree angle from the garage. It featured no less than three elbow joints, each installed backwards so that the wider male end of the spout overlapped and allowed water to drizzle out the joints. When he sighed “wow that guy couldn’t hang anything straight to save his life,” he was talking to you Dan.

Dan’s the guy who planed the apple tree in the front yard and didn’t think to prune it to a height that us sub-15 foot humans could reach the fruit on. He’s the one who built the slightly slanting garage on a floating pad. His hand chiselled out the wall to make room for the garage door hinge. Empty paint cans and containers of rusted nails were his passion. Daniel had a habit of sanding hardwood against the grain took pleasure in laying layer upon layer of cheap linoleum flooring. A vegetable garden planted at the root of a massive oak tree? What could go wrong.

He also seems to have had a taste for home grown rhubarb, but I can’t hold that against him.

I spend the remaining daylight hours uprooting Daniel’s favorite plant, which I suspect he gingerly spread across the yard before he handed me the keys. If I seem to ignore blogs and other online commitments these days, you know who to blame.