two chores

Did I say that we were having what passes for fall weather around here? How silly of me. It's been in the 90s all week. And humid. It was so hot last Sunday that I got overheated and dehydrated working for a couple of hours on the ditch in front of the shop with a machete needs sharpening and long handled nippers and stump killer and poison ivy poison spray. Yes, I know I don't use poison. It goes against everything I believe in but sometimes it is necessary like when it's the only way to get rats out of the walls of your house or get rid of the poison ivy so you can use the weed eater in the ditch. I'm very judicious in it's use, targeting only the plant I need to get rid of and only if more mechanical means won't work. Just goes to show there are no absolutes though, something else I believe in.

Anyway, I hacked away at the 4' tall grasses and other lower stuff that grows in untended places with the machete because the fire hydrant was barely visible so I thought it would probably be a good idea to clear at least around it. After about an hour my neighbor whose property shares the fence around the shop property came out to do his own lawn and came over and finished it in about 5 minutes with his weed eater. I was very grateful. He even brought me out a pair of gloves to wear. 

So I loaded up all the grass I had cut down in the truck and hauled it to the burn pile. Then I cut down the dozen or so small trash trees that had grown up around the gate, against the fence. and in the ditch with the nippers and hauled those to the burn pile. It's a steep ditch so we can't use a mower and poison ivy has colonized a section of it so that has to go before I can use the new gas weed eater that our son-in-law bought and leaves here with us when he doesn't need it. Now I just have to figure out how to start it and use it later, after the poison ivy has died. The last thing I need is to have tiny wet pieces of that plant spewed all over me. Nope.

When I realized I was as hot as I have been on a trip in Big Bend when I was doing the river guide thing in the desert with no river to go dunk in to cool off before I gave out and I had been sweating buckets, I quit and came in. By evening when my face was still red I figured I must have got some sun even though I had been wearing a hat. Monday was hot and sweaty in the shop and when it was time to go to yoga I went in to change clothes and looked at my yoga pants and bent over on the bed.

"I'm tired and I don't want to sweat any more,” I told Minnie who dogs my every step. Abby challenges us and makes us sweat.

I didn't go.

Tuesday and Wednesday were equally hot and sweaty days being outside doing cold work. So I decided that my leg was healed enough that I would get in the pool Thursday and scrub it down and empty it. I haven't been in the pool once this year. I put it up at the grandboy's behest and he and his friend did use it a time or two but mostly it has sat unused with the cover on and me checking the chemicals sporadically and finally not at all.

So guess what? Yesterday it was not hot and a cold front what passes for a cold front here has started blowing in and it was overcast part of the day and I took the cover off the pool and looked at that greenish water with all the leaves and mosquito larvae that had accumulated on the cover in it and...nah, I'm not getting in there. I used the skimming net to get as many of the leaves and stuff out as I could and pulled the plug. I got the sides scrubbed by leaning over as it emptied. This afternoon when it hits the mid 70s I'll get in the ankle deep water that's left and scrub the bottom and we'll dismantle it, rinse it off, and put it away.