THE FIRST DAY OF SUMMER....

"A little bit of summer 

is what the whole year is all about...."

Today is August 21, 2019.  And it is the first day of MY summer!  Yea!  It has arrived at last!  And I say, "Better late than never."  

Between a combination of bad weather and my United schedule, the covers have been on the patio furniture since last summer except for one day when I took them off--for a whole three hours.  Then the sky opened up and poured another round of heavy rain.  That was back in June.

We took the furniture out of the basement early this year to accommodate Orion and Briggs having to sleep down there while Burgandy is living with us until her new house is built.  Bad thing is that it was so early--well, not really that early--the heavy snow in May soaked everything.  The cushions, the pillows, the nap blankets, AND the chair covers.  Everything was heavy with wet--and some of the pillows got mildewed before everything dried out.  Tossed those....

When everything finally got dried out and all the dead leaves and springtime critters of the insect variety got cleaned out, then that was when I took the covers off.   For the three hours.  And after Louis and I ran out of the house to put the covers back on during the pouring rain, that's where they stayed until today.

For most of the summer I have had only one day off in between trips.  There was either a daily rainstorm or I had so much other stuff to take care of, there wasn't time to go outside.  The flower pots never got tended to.  I did pull out all the dead stuff during a nice day in the late fall.  While I was doing that, I broke open the heads of the flowers and scattered the seeds over the soil in each flower pot and kind of raked them into the dirt.

It was those few seeds that sprouted in the spring with help from whatever snow melted into the pots.  They  were the only seeded flowers that graced the back patio.  They were anemic, stringy, spotted with white here and there, and not evenly distributed in the containers.  Still, I did think they were worthy of being watered since they had made such a gargantuan effort to sprout and grow, willy-nilly or not. The whole patio looked pretty pathetic.  Plus, the three huge branches from the backyard trees which blew down months ago were still in the side yard along the fence.  UGLY!

However, Louis sawed the tree branches into smaller pieces on Saturday.  Then Burgandy and her boys carried them to her truck, and off went that unsightly mess to the yard recycle place up in Fort Collins.  Done.   Quite unexpectedly, another bad windstorm came up just as they were finishing the toting to the truck and blew most of the leaf debris right out of the yard!  How fortuitous.  Unfortunately, the wind also blew down two more smaller branches at the same time.  The trees' densities are getting thinner and thinner.  I have come to know first hand why my dad would moan about the wind being so destructive to the trees.  

Feeling desperate the last two months because I couldn't get outside to take care of the patio, I paid $85 to get some help from kids in the ward and other kids out of the ward.  But, in spite of detailed written instructions and a walk around the yard with each of  them to help them see what I was expecting, not a lot got done.  Not one was interested in finishing the job, though I pay generously at $10 an hour and furnish a little notebook for them to keep track of their hours and write down a description of what they have done.

So, back to the old adage:  "If you want something done, you better well plan on doing it yourself."

Today I did just that.  Figured generally making my little Garden of Eden inviting would take about two hours.  Three, tops.  After all I was only planning on removing those anemic blossoms now interspersed with weeds, preparing the soil with fertilizer (not that I'm going to plant any seeds at this late date in the year anyway) sweeping down the patio, arranging the furniture, putting out the cushions for the chairs at the table, and planting the little cacti into the fence boxes opposite my kitchen and bathroom windows.  I was smart enough to know that pulling the weeds in the rocks wasn't going to get done today. 

But what I did get done took me over six hours!  Untangling the hose just so I could use it took a half an hour.  It seemed like everything I did just had some little glitch attached to it.  But lucky me, today was one of the handful of days since the beginning of July that hasn't been in the 90's.  Just a nice pleasant 70 degrees until about one p.m.  then it shot up to 83 degrees, but it was still doable to work in.  Hot, but I managed because I kept the image in my mind of how nice everything was going to look. 

 And now that it's done, it does!

I am really looking forward to coming down the neighborhood path behind our house tomorrow after my walk.  It's going to look soooo good!  I'm hoping there will be a few days in the next couple of months that I can go out and sit and enjoy the peaceful surroundings.  Sitting outside has always made my summer worthwhile in the past few years.  

Now see for yourself how pleasant everything looks, in spite of a dearth of flowers which in other years have been abundant.  I think you will agree....

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER!