The Weather

I climbed out of bed this morning to find the temperature had fallen below 70° for the first time in what seems like weeks…

Who would have thought that a spring-like morning at the end of May would be reason to celebrate the day. I grabbed my first cup of coffee and headed out to the lawn chairs we left out at the edge of the field. The day was starting still and hazy…almost a light fog…hanging in the slanted shafts of sunlight coming through the trees along the fence line to the east of the three acres next door.

I finished my coffee but was in no hurry to get inside…So I sat, dogs at my feet, hummingbird in the mimosa tree above my head…Red bird on the bush over there…White egret of some type soaring overhead on its solitary way to breakfast.

The sounds of traffic off, in the distance, as much of the world begins its daily journey in to the office…It really doesn’t intrude on my muse here at the edge of my back yard.

Coffee Muses outside with the birds…And the cows.

The Cows

Yes, we have had a couple of steers roaming through the yard since Sunday. The police have been out almost every day…They stand around and scratch their heads, then they move the steers back into the woods along the Mustang Bayou and leave. Makes for interesting times when you have a  ton or more of beef on the hoof roaming through your backyard…For days.

They are also making the nights interesting as they keep the dogs up and barking most of the way through. It seems my dogs, who normally bark at their lack of shadows each night, think great big black “dogs” don’t belong in their yard…And they are going to let the “dogs” and you know about it…Again and again.

The Deere

I finally got my Deere back from the shop…What is it about lawnmowers? They only breakdown in the height of the growing season. The steering went out…Again…Same problem last year. While I had it in shop I had them do the seasonal tune-up, replace the battery, replace the blades. The steering went just before it was time to mow again and they had it in the shop for two weeks. So I was facing three weeks of grass when the Deere rolled off of the trailer and I wrote the check…

Needless to say, I spent most of yesterday riding around in circles. Big circles, little circles…Cut it high first then run back over much of  it at normal cutting height to take out the seed stalks that didn’t get cut the first time. It was so nice to not be fighting the steering wheel every time I turned a corner…And it’s amazing how many corners there are inside all of the circles you travel on a mower.

As much as I dislike the ecologic impact of the swath of grass and the running of the machine to keep it trimmed, I do so like to sit and look across a freshly cut lawn…So that’s what Sherry and I did last evening before her addiction to “Dancing With The Stars’ called us in…I nice quite hour sitting in those chairs I mentioned at the start of this post. Only, we ended the day over a couple of  glasses of Zin instead of coffee…

Grandchildren

Now that the tractor has returned home I am sure Grandson #2 will be looking forward to his daily rides around the woods out back. Once he discovered riding on the tractor it became almost impossible to get him to walk the trails with me…Not that the summer temperatures around here are conducive to walking trails…

It’s funny, Grandson #1 doesn’t enjoy riding on the tractor at all. I tried it with him when he was about the same age as #2 and he wanted off pretty quick and has never wanted back on…

Oh well, time for another cup of coffee…