12:03 p.m. - 2005-10-09
Indian Summer

Frolicking in the garden with the squirrels on a crisp fall day

As my sister and other online buddies who live in the "Land Down Under" head into a blazing summer, we here in the ol US Midwest are heading hopelessly into a cold cold winter.

Last week we had 86 degrees and all the spring plants started blooming again...then overnight it plunged into a high of 56 degrees and cloudy and we went from the AC to heat in less than 24 hours. Would have been nice to have a season of being able to keep the windows open for a few hours each day letting some nice 70 degree weather blow in, but it skipped the 70's and went from upper 80's to the mid 50's...brrrrrrrr!!!

One benefit to the coolness though is that you can work all day in the garden and not work up a sweat.

Mike and I spent the whole day clearing the jungle on the side of the house. Multiple tangles of blackberry bushes and a giant bush with rock hard roots seemingly cemented into the ground. My shovel kept hitting what I thought was rock. It took Me, Mike, 2 hours and a chain saw to get the MF'ing root out of the ground.

After clearing the brush, we bundled it into bundles and then gathered all the long dead branches that came from the trees we cut down into bundles to put at the curb too. I was going to keep them for fire kindling but every day a days worth of kindling falls from the sky (overhead trees) and our yard was a pile of sticks. We bundled up the longest ones and piled the smaller ones to keep for the fireplace. I will get a big trash container to contain our "kindling".

I started a fire in the outdoor fire pit and just walked the property back and forth like we did as kids before we had to mow the lawn and picked up all the sticks and burned them.

The walnut tree comes down Thursday. It is about 100 feet tall and will make some awsome fire wood in a years time, but the thought of renting a gas powered chain saw (our electric one just won't begin to cut into that hard wood) and rendering 100 feet of super hard wood and it's branches has me wondering if we will be biting off more than we can chew. My Mother in Law is moving in in about 20 days and Mike will be handling all that too, and I am sure my services will be called to help with the move also, taking away at least one weekend before the winter weather hits. We have so much to do around this yard, that I wonder if we should add an entire weekend cutting up a tree and stacking the wood.

Actually the wood stacking area is not done yet. I need to transplant about 30 hostas and have a load of decomposed granite dumped in the driveway and moved by the wheelbarrow load to the back yard. I need to start on that today but.....I CAN BARELY MOVE!!!!!!....It is embarrassing....every bone in my body is crying out in pain from yesterdays work.

On top of needing to continue my landscape plans, pain put aside......my house is a mess and Aunt Edie will be visiting in a couple of days. There are boxes that got moved to the basement and never unpacked and boxes that are in the upstairs rooms that are also unpacked. I do need to at least unpack my winter clothing and wash it because it is time to wear it and I am still in summer clothes, wearing pink shoes. I can't even begin to tell you what box my black shoes are in.

I need to grocery shop but hate to take the time away from the house to do that, however if I don't go first, I will be too sore to walk across the parking lot and so hungry I will buy the store up....all fattening food.

I need more energy and more time.....where oh where can I get more of that.

This is my favorite time of year, however and the thought of spending it in the yard working while watching the squirrels playfully hopping from limb to limb, mouth full of walnut is tempting. I know they are working hard to store up food for the winter, but they somehow always look like they are frolicking. Perhaps I will head out there and dig a bit and sit a bit and just enjoy and watch the squirrels, blue jays, woodpechers and chipmonk. Sounds like a pleasant way to spend the day. Boxes will always be there in the cold of winter when I don't want to think about venturing outside.

P. I. Yarnsmith.

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