INCREDIBLE

The weather we have had this past month and a half has been so polar opposite of the pattern we have been in previous years that we are somewhat baffled as to how to handle it. Our first inclination is to just wait it out, sooner or later the rain will cease and we can get to work but 42 days into the monsoon season and there is barely a glimmer of hope as to that happening. The  moment it heats up and the sun comes out we can probably expect some severe storms, what with all the humidity now.  It is 98 % outside and 89 % in the house, ya that's right   ICKY and sticky. Rain hasn't actually fallen from the sky in nearly two days but water is seeping out of everywhere and the lawn is saturated...We had 6 inches of rain in June and so far in July nearly 7 inches more...and still half a month to go. Good Grief..

I quickly ran over the heavier parts of the lawn today, my mower gliding through standing water...but if I don't cut it while it's wet, and wait until it is dryer it will to be too tall for the mower to cut and that spells disaster..because anything bigger will make ruts on the lawn. 

Some people may think I am a bit too anal about my yard..but to me it is a sanctuary of loveliness, a buffer between our house and the general ugliness of a functioning farm. So I like my yard to be immaculate, no junk lying about, no manure, no weeds or ruts from the tractor.

I picked a few tiny zucchini's and tomatoes from the garden today but I nearly had to call for help to get myself back out, the soil is so wet it sucked my feet in like quicksand. Ha, even the deer last night tried to walk across it and after only a few steps, thought better of it and turned back. Time to put the 8 ft fence up around the garden...or I will lose all my carrots to the deer again this year.

I am at my whits end as to what to do about Riley the chocolate lab, pulling all my flowers off the plants.  He has especially been bothering the planters I have, that by the way are just gorgeous this year, flowers cascading over the rims of the pots and I come home to flowers and petals littering the sidewalk and a bald plant.. I am afraid to put Tabasco sauce or pepper on them for fear of attracting the other dog Owen, he eats anything that comes from the house...and so far he does Not bother my flowers...so I am thinking of getting some of that animal repellent... but for now as a last resort I have placed the planters on top of the big boulders by our house, where he will have to go quite a ways out of his way to get at them...it looks a bit ridiculous but so far it's doing the trick.

I am just now recovering from a real shock to my system, I got this morning when I went down to get my mower out of its shed...as I approached the sliding doors I could hear a squeaking noise and scratching so I looked around, thinking it was BATS. We have a family of bats that live here and help us with mosquito control...and I have not, as yet got around to building them a bat house...but it is next on my list of things to do.  Any way, the bats sometimes roost, squeezed in between the two rolling doors of this shed. They like the snugness I guess, and I have on other occasions rolled the doors and had a bat or two fall out on the ground by my feet...some of them get injured and I always feel bad about hurting them...so I was leery about this noise and went back to the house to tell Robert about it...he was coming down to put gas in the mower anyway so he hopped onto a barrel inside the shed (gaining entry through the one door that was partially opened at the far end of the shed..) He said there was a birds nest up there...and that he could, HE THOUGHT, baby birds crawling along the soffit...HAHAHAHAHA so I am standing about ten feet away...and he comes back out, grabs the door that is closing off entry to my mower and rolls it open....WELLLLLLLLL...   this big thing, flew out from between the two doors, heading right for me....I mean seriously, it flew right at me...I was, apparently, screaming in a deep gurgly voice (but that's another story) and it was no damned baby bird....it was an adult brown bat....big and fat. When it was about a foot away and still hadn't veered away I put my hand up to swat it away and just as it turned away, my hand brushed against it.....ewwwwww....  and it latched onto the sleeve of my shirt...so there I was, gurgling like a little girl with laryngitis, waving my arm in the air to dislodge the bat and jumping up and down... it was the most exercise I have gotten in a couple of weeks....Robert (it all happened so fast that he barely caught a glimpse of it) rushed out of the quad shed just in time to see me throw my hat into the brambles beside the shed.....I had used my other hand to grab my hat and brush the bat off my arm...and it grabbed a hold of my hat so the hat and the bat went sailing into the raspberry canes and tall grass...the last I saw of my hat it was resting on top of a raspberry cane and the bat was flying towards an old chicken house.....ewwwwwwwww.  It took nearly an hour of steady mowing before my heart stopped beating so fast.  I am not usually afraid of bats when I am prepared for encounters but that was just a bit too close for comfort....  Any way, I got a hug out of it, Robert was so amused at my reaction that he was still chuckling about it a while later when he drove out of the yard on his quad. 

I am now going to print plans off the internet for a bat house....