'Tis the Season!

Who knew? Even in suburbia, living seasonally has unexpected ramifications!

I seem to be swamped; with what I can't quite tell you. I think it's just that summer is a time for everything to happen, all at once, for 10 or more hours a day! I'm trying to be good and keep up with it all, and that means no plopping my butt down for two hours in front of the computer, loading up pictures for my blog.

I thought I was at least keeping up with y'all's blogs, but I guess not. This afternoon at work, I peeked at my "reading list" and saw all kinds of updates. Where have I been??

So lemme, tellya, 'tis the season for lots of things...

...shedding! Rosie has a long, double coat, which she "blows" twice a year. I love that expression; it really does describe it. I vacuumed Saturday afternoon, and when I came home that evening after dinner out (more on that later), there were many clumps of black fur from the living room, down the short hallway and into the bedroom. And that's in addition to the usual hairiness all over the rest of the carpet. The light-colored, non-black carpet. Next time we get a dog, I'm bringing carpet samples.

...mowing! Do I really need to explain? Miss Chef has finally come out and stated she hates mowing...which leaves me. And I'm not a big fan, myself. The rain has been fantastic for our garden, but it sure makes it hard to find time to keep up with that other green stuff out there.

...weeds! I knew it was coming, but I was unprepared for the effects of heavy, regular rains. And letting the grass grow long enough to seed--we were really, really bad one time, and now we've got grass seedlings popping up everywhere. Plus, we apparently didn't let the compost "cook" enough, so we have gazillions of volunteer tomato & watermelon plants coming up. The tomatoes are way too late to bear much fruit before freezing time, but I didn't plant any watermelon this year, so I might find room for one to stick around...and the one strawberry volunteer probably won't do us much good, but heck, I'll give it a chance. As for the non-desirables, just when I start to make some headway there, I run into...

...ants! As a Yankee, I can't stand the way fire ants just come in and take over. Little bastards, that's my garden! I had managed to finally get them under control, when high grass and non-stop rains gave the ants an advantage. I saw lots of new hills the last time I mowed, and I just now got 2 or 3 good bites trying to pull grass out of the garden. I've found two hills in amidst the veggies, and I'm stumped as to how to treat them without chemicalling up our basil & garlic. So I got a childish revenge on them by dousing them with the hose. So there, mleah! (Yeah, I know, they'll be back, but I still enjoyed it.)

...social activities! I can spend all winter moping around the house by myself every night, blogging away for hours. But now it seems as if everyone has seen the light and decided to do something. Not only are the farmers' markets roaring into full swing, but friends I haven't seen for months call up for dinner dates, organizations hold all kinds of events and activities, and everyone hits the road for some traveling. I'd better get all that weeding, vacuuming and ant battling out of the way during the week, 'cause there ain't no rest for the weary on the weekends! Which leads to...

...double booking! So far, I've managed to plan vacation over a doctor's appointment (guess which one's gonna get priority?), and Miss Chef has planned dinner with a friend over a Civil War re-enactment we'd talked about last month. Mom has planned cataract surgery and related appointments over prime tomato-canning season (she was gonna come help), and that's just the stuff I'm aware of!

Phew! I'm getting tired just thinking about all this stuff. All this extra sunlight makes me stay up later, and wake up before my alarm. We can electrify, planify and homogenize our lifestyles all we want, but Mr. Sun is still the boss of me.