Adjusting to the new season

The weather is decidedly screwy. There I was attacking weeds when a medium sized cloud decided to hover overhead and drop rain on me. To the north, east, south, and west of the cloud, there was blue sky and scattered clouds. But right overhead was a rain cloud. It took its own sweet time moving on, too. Now everything is wet again. The Arizona desert looks better and better.

But the lawn is mowed. During the week long deluge, the grass grew about a foot. Nothing like grass up to your knees. I had to borrow the neighbor’s mulching power mower. My push mower doesn’t do foot high grass. I had thought when I bought the push mower that I was finally finished with storing gas cans, but no. I have a push mower and a gas can so I can borrow the neighbor’s lawn mower and send it back with a full tummy.

I have mentioned to the lad, from time to time, that I’d like to turn the back yard into a brick courtyard. Get rid of the grass. It’s the most worthless plant on the planet. All it does is require constant feeding and attention. And then it has the bad grace to turn brown during the height of summer.

The brick courtyard idea probably wouldn’t fly in this neighborhood. For some reason, grass is valued as a landscape statement. We must have prettily manicured grass. I seriously pushed the limits when, in a fit of gleeful abandon, I tossed a fistful or two of white clover seed around my back yard. Not in the front yard, of course. That wouldn’t have gone over well. But my back yard is behind a fence, so I can get away with clover in my back yard. I like it. It’s aways green and it’s pretty. It doesn’t object to drought and it doesn’t object to week long rain storms. Clover is easy to get along with. It doesn’t grow a foot high, either.

On another front...looks like this is going to be a bad year for ticks. So far, I’ve found two of them on Terry and the other evening the lad leaped off the sofa with a blood curdling yell and held something pinched between his fingers. He’d found a tick crawling up his pant leg. Yay. That is only the second time in the eleven years we’ve lived here that I’ve had a loose tick in the house. After the first occurrence, my eye has been trained to be on the lookout. Constantly. So, it appears that this will be another year when the words “Tick check” become a standard part of daily life when we walk through the door. The lad is very fearful of ticks, having gone through Lyme disease a few years ago. It’s not something one forgets. Ever.