It's been over a year since Hurricane Katrina ravaged the coast, and my yard and woods are still so wounded. I've given up on removing all the downed trees. I just can't do it all alone. I used to be so anal about the grass. It had to be cut all the time. Even before I had the riding mower, I kept all of the 10 acres trimmed neatly. I created the beautiful winding paths through the woods. I would walk them almost daily and trim them as I did. I haven't been on most of the paths more than twice since the storm. I just can't face the destruction. The riding mower is down and I've tried to keep up with the push mower, but rain and heat impede my progress so I've let some areas of the "lawn" grow up. I just don't have the spirit to fight it anymore. I haven't cut a single vine for a basket. I did try trimming some back early in the spring, but there's been so much more to do that I've let them go. Vines creep up to the house now by the driveway. When the weather's cooler, I'll have to seriously cut some out. I feel so bad. The once beautiful lawn looks abandoned now. I guess that's how I feel--abandoned. I know that I'll bounce back eventually and get it all done. But it'll never feel the same. The big oaks gone. I don't even recognize parts of the yard now that they have changed so much. Louie was buried under that one big oak. So much for a tree as your monument. It's hard to explain to people how much it hurts to lose trees. Trees that I planted or allowed to grow up. Trees I shaped and trimmed and babied for 18 years. 18 years. Like a child becoming a teen. And then overnight uprooted, cracked, splintered into twisted corkscrews. Horrible. I'm angry at Mother Nature. I was tending her children. I worked hard to bring them back to an empty lot, to attract the birds and butterflies and the breezes that would gently sway them. And in a hissy fit, she brutalized them. So I feel bad about the messy yard, overgrown in spots, abandoned. The whole world abandoned MS and left us to our own devices. Unfair. Not the whole world. But most of it. And there's more to do than I can handle right now. I still can't bear to see their skeletons.