With the generous help of Bernie Coveney, who decided that a broken down old man with a bad hip, two failing knees and a Rube Goldberg ankle couldn’t do it alone (and he was right), the DR PowerGrader now sits in my garage.

An undercurrent of discontent runs through Floyd County lately, a buzz of unrest that signals, for some, a dream that has soured.

You hear it over coffee in the mornings or in conversations at lunch: Sadness with a touch of anger.

Since returning to Floyd in 2004, I’ve encountered a number of people who complain how things haven’t turned out like they expected and they say maybe, just maybe, it’s time to move on.

For them, the honeymoon is over.

The good news is that the anxiously-awaited PowerGrader has arrived and is ready for pickup at the trucking depot in Roanoke.

The bad news is that the driveway has to be dry in order to regrade it and repair the deep ruts that have turned what used to be a smooth driveway into Floyd County’s most challenging off-road trail.

And it’s raining. According to the talking heads it will rain tomorrow as well. And part of Thursday.

Five years ago today, I stood alongside Columbia Pike in Arlington and photographed the Pentagon as it burned. I arrived just 45 minutes after the hijacked airliner slammed into the Southwestern side of the building.

A lot of things can and will be said today about the fifth anniversay of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I think I will just let the my pictures in the video below say them for me. The photos were shot on 9/11 at the Pentagon and on the days following at the site and at events around Washington.

Gossip is a fact of life in society but small town gossip serves as the main source of news for many people. When the local newspaper is a weekly and the Roanoke TV stations need both a map and a GPS to find the county, gossip becomes the paper of record.

Gossip also provides salacious news you won’t find in the pages of The Floyd Press and on news at 6 — like who’s sleeping with who, who’s no longer involved with who and who left town after the rabbit died.

Salicious gossip, of course, is what most want to hear and the juicier the better — even if untrue.

Part of the front yard of Chateau Thompson: Sharing the obsession

One does not have to spend much time in Floyd County to know that many residents here are obsessed with their yards.

Homeowners here have large, well-manicured lawns that require constant, obsessive attention.

Our three-and-a-half acre front yard (above) would be considered large in many areas but is about average here, although ours is on a slope that is about 35 degrees in some places which makes mowing a real adventure.

But, according to CBS Sunday Morning, obsession with yards is a national trend:

"It gets mowed twice a week," Mike Walls says of his lawn.

In Hilliard, Ohio, Walls, and his wife, Jenny, are self-described lawn fanatics.

For some people, working in the yard is therapy. For the Walls, it’s a sign they may need therapy.

"He’s obsessive with the yard and the grass and the lines being straight and the edging and then I like the gardening and the flowers," Jenny says.

By one estimate there are 58 million lawn-owners in the country, turning what was simple maintenance into a national pastime.

"It’s been known to be contagious, though, and we don’t think that’s a bad thing. Our neighbors see us mowing and they come over and ask us how we get the lawn like this," Mike says.

Mike has even been known to mow in the rain. Mike admits that he becomes irked when neighbors fail to keep their lawns mowed.

"I have a tendency to wander aimlessly down the road a little ways and do another person’s lawn because of that," he says. Professor Ted Steinberg studies the environment’s role in American history. "I have etched into my mind — really burned into my mind — this memory of my father mowing, watering, fertilizing.

He used to set up the sprinkler in such a way so that every single blade of grass would get some water," Steinberg says.

In the postcard perfect community of Shaker Heights, Ohio, he found the perfect subject for his next book — right out his own front door. "I took a walk in the neighborhood and I just couldn’t believe my eyes.

The lawns of some of my neighbors made the perfect lawns of my Long Island past look like a bunch of beat up old cow pastures. I thought to myself, ‘What’s up with this,’" Steinberg says.

That curiosity turned into "American Green: The Obsessive Quest For The Perfect Lawn." "There are anywhere between 25 and 40 million acres of turf in the U.S., which is an area about the size of Kentucky — perhaps as large as Florida. So I would say yes, it’s a deeply entrenched American institution," he says.

 Damn. Should have mowed the yard on Sunday.

Didn’t.

Spent most of the day on the couch, off my feet because of too much walking at the Carroll County Gun Show & Flea Market on Saturday.

Too much strain on the knees, hip and ankle. Should have known better. Now it’s raining…again.

Another soaking rain that we need so much but which also means the yard, already out of control, will have to wait.

More rain means more damage to the driveway.

Oh well, The PowerGrader is not due to arrive until next week.

Deeper ruts just means more challenge.

Rain aggravates the arthritis.

Even after two procedures to burn away the calcium, the ankle still stiffens, the knees still pop and the hip creaks.

But we need the rain.

That’s what I keep telling myself.

We need the rain.