My big rugs are back from the cleaners! Now the house finally looks like a proper middle-class home ready for winter.

My back yard is very small, and overgrown with shrubs that look weedy and tired even in high summer. There’s also a large silver maple with boughs hanging low enough to block access to anyone brave enough to walk around the house. Struggling in the shadow of the maple, a poor little ash tree clings to life against the back fence.

The deck behind the house is a wreck and the fence on the west side of the house stays vertical only out of habit, so I foresee lots of change in Spring. Marc the contractor builds decks — that’s his favourite kind of project — but I have yet to find a “tree guy”. I must also check with City Hall about the poor little ash tree, because it’s growing on an easement, and about the west side fence, which does not run all the way to the back (south side) lot line but stops at the end of the ramshackle deck. Am I allowed to extend the fence across the easement? I would like the neighbours’ children’s toys to stay on their property.

The cough was less insistent last night, possibly because I dosed myself with Neo-Citran, a vile-tasting potion that promises to reduce congestion. (It has an antihistamine in it.) Now willing to try anything short of eye of newt to get a decent night’s sleep, I will also check the active ingredients in Ny-Quil when I’m out shopping today. I have bronchitis, of course, but I’m pretty sure there’s no active bacterial infection down there — it’s just asthmatic crud — so a doctor can’t prescribe anything (especially antibiotics) that will do any better than the stuff I’m using now. I would like to ditch the Neo-Citran, however, because it’s loaded with acetominophen that I don’t need and is hard on the liver.