End of Summer Afternoon

Summer used to be my least favorite season. Hot, sticky, boring, lonely (as all our fellow ex-pats and most of the citizens of our adpted countries travelled the globe), hot. Hot. But, as I mentioned last summer, I'm coming to love them. May and June were overwhelming with outside work, with the acres still somewhat unmanageable, but that is getting better, and the July sun is keeping things down just a bit.





A Strasbourg/Indy friend came by today, and we caught up between chainsaw swings as we trimmed up the walnut trees and cut the shoots and weeds from around the bases of 7 of our gazillion trees. (She had her first try at a chainsaw, and she might be as addicted as I am!) We smooshed a few apples in the grass and rolled around on the first-fallen of the Very Annoying Walnuts.

(Silverstein and I enjoyed a 10-minute break the day before....)

Imagine weeds and shoots 2-3 feet up each of these trees, and a mess of grass and old sticks between the walnut and birch on the left. It will be so much easier to mow - and we'll have about 200 fewer walnuts ricocheting off our mower blades in September because of all the branches we sheared from the lower trunks. One more smallish project off the list in my head!

Speaking of walnuts...September might be becoming my favorite month of all. No leaves to mulch, yet, but the garden will be mostly empty, the grass will be growing more slowly, the goldenrod in full bloom, the sun still warm.

But July is ending beautifully, 70's and 80's daytime, 50's and 60's nights. It was a perfect afternoon to spend outside with Silverstein, a few cicadas and a friend. After K headed home, I recovered by lying in the sun for a bit. Ahhh.