I wish I could bottle the first week of June and keep it for January. This is the time of year when the green that hits you as you walk out your door almost hurts your eyes. The vegetation makes me think of the tropical forestation in Hawaii or Mexico. So lush and thick and so, so green. The air even looks green.
Tuesday evening, I drove to town to try to catch my bonus granddaughter’s softball game. Although I thought I had plenty of time to spare, they weren’t doing well and they called the game early due to the “Ten Run Rule”. I got there just after it ended, but I still got to see the kids and visit for a little bit. As I drove home, I had the windows down. The wind blowing in carried the redolent scent of honeysuckle and multiflora rose…so sweet and hypnotic. I caught myself wanted to close my eyes and breathe that heady aroma in…committing it to memory.
We have honeysuckle growing on the fence surrounding our backyard. Every time I walk out to the truck or to do some chore outside, I’m met with that familiar sweetness. I think the first time I recognized it was out at the farm. One of my mom’s cousins lives a couple miles down the road and we often took walks out there. I remember going for a run in the ‘70s and that scent stopped my in my tracks till I found its source. If you pull a blossom of honeysuckle off the vine and suck the end, you can taste that sweet nectar that attracts every bee from five counties.
We headed out to mow our five acres yesterday around noon. I should have gotten an earlier start because by 3:00 it was drizzling pretty steady and the grass became too wet to mow without clumping. I got the two big fields done and Mr. FixIt finished mowing the edges and the bank by the road. He also had the weed eater out. It doesn’t look like we’ll have another shot at it till Saturday or so because of rain.
Setzer’s called yesterday to say TOW-Wanda is ready to pick up. They sealed the roof, replaced the 7-pin power cord on the front, and replaced the plug on the main power cord. When I was a newbie, I pulled away from my neighbor’s house and forgot to unplug the cord from the outlet on their front porch. I dragged the cord for a few hundred yards before someone flagged me down. By then, much of the rubber was ground away and seemed to be getting worse as the material hardened with age.
Campers are fun, but they are a lot of work. You have to keep up with regular maintenance and watch them like a hawk to catch things before they become major problems. I’m still thinking of downsizing and have my eye on a couple of camper models I might be interested in. Like cars, campers are in short supply this year. We will be feeling the effects of the pandemic for some time to come. For cars, it is a shortage of computer chips. For campers, it’s the foam core insulation and the glue that fastens down the laminate sheets. There were a couple of fires that damaged the plants that produce this products. All that trickles down to the consumer in higher prices and/or shorter supply.
Mowing put cleaning on the back burner yesterday. Now we’ll have to decide if we want to go pick up the camper or stay home and get things done around here. It depends on the weather, I think. If it’s raining, I’ll wait a couple of days to bring TOW-Wanda home. We haven’t slept in the camper once this year because of her leak, so I’m really anxious to get her back here and camp!
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“The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.”
Genesis 1:12 NIV