The sun is shining and the day is getting warmer. It was cloudy when I woke up and only 65°. It is supposed to get as high as 75° and be sunny all day, the same with tomorrow.

Well, I spend mega bucks at the garden shop yesterday and wrecked my back pulling the heavy cart. Luckily one of my former students works there and he dragged the cart to my car and filled the trunk and the back seat. For the vegetable garden, I bought cucumbers which should be enough to fill the rest of it. I bought cherry tomato pots for the deck, four or five different herbs, a hanging plant for the deck and four different flowers for the front garden. The only flowers I didn’t buy were the annuals for the clay pots which are all around the deck rail. I’ll get those later today or tomorrow after breakfast. That’ll finish the garden for this season, said she with tongue in cheek.

My neighbors are disappearing. I can no longer see down the row of houses to my friends’ house at the end of the street, and the neighbors on each side of me are almost completely hidden. My deck is again becoming my private refuge.

I finished my book. It was an odd book revolving around two sets of conjoined twins born 80 or so years apart, but I really liked it. Sometimes I don’t enjoy interspersed backward and forward trips in time, but this novelist did it well. As always, I’m sorry I finished the book. The joyful anticipation of sitting and reading it is gone.

This world is such a noisy place. I woke up this morning to the sound of the lawn mower at my neighbor’s house and a leaf blower on the next street. The leaf blowers are the worst. They are the noisiest of all garden machines and the worst spewers of pollution.

I miss the summer Saturday sounds of my childhood: the click clack of hand mowers, the scratching sounds of rakes and the swishing of brooms across sidewalks and driveways. Back then, there was something communal about mowing lawns. I remember my dad stopping to talk with our neighbor who was also mowing his lawn. My dad would lean on the long handle of his mower. They’d talk a while then they’d get back to the task at hand, mowing their lawns. I also remember my dad with his hand trimmer working on the bushes in our front yard. His trimmer looked like giant scissors. My dad always chopped the bushes too short, and my mother always complained.

When I used to mow my own lawn, I had a hand mower because back then my lawn was so small, just the front of the house. I also had hand trimmers. Now, I have a landscaper who has all the tools, the noisy tools. I do have to admit, though, my lawn and my yard have never looked better.

The sun is shining and the day is getting warmer. It was cloudy when I woke up and only 65°. It is supposed to get as high as 75° and be sunny all day, the same with tomorrow.

Well, I spend mega bucks at the garden shop yesterday and wrecked my back pulling the heavy cart. Luckily one of my former students works there and he dragged the cart to my car and filled the trunk and the back seat. For the vegetable garden, I bought cucumbers which should be enough to fill the rest of it. I bought cherry tomato pots for the deck, four or five different herbs, a hanging plant for the deck and four different flowers for the front garden. The only flowers I didn’t buy were the annuals for the clay pots which are all around the deck rail. I’ll get those later today or tomorrow after breakfast. That’ll finish the garden for this season, said she with tongue in cheek.

My neighbors are disappearing. I can no longer see down the row of houses to my friends’ house at the end of the street, and the neighbors on each side of me are almost completely hidden. My deck is again becoming my private refuge.

I finished my book. It was an odd book revolving around two sets of conjoined twins born 80 or so years apart, but I really liked it. Sometimes I don’t enjoy interspersed backward and forward trips in time, but this novelist did it well. As always, I’m sorry I finished the book. The joyful anticipation of sitting and reading it is gone.

This world is such a noisy place. I woke up this morning to the sound of the lawn mower at my neighbor’s house and a leaf blower on the next street. The leaf blowers are the worst. They are the noisiest of all garden machines and the worst spewers of pollution.

I miss the summer Saturday sounds of my childhood: the click clack of hand mowers, the scratching sounds of rakes and the swishing of brooms across sidewalks and driveways. Back then, there was something communal about mowing lawns. I remember my dad stopping to talk with our neighbor who was also mowing his lawn. My dad would lean on the long handle of his mower. They’d talk a while then they’d get back to the task at hand, mowing their lawns. I also remember my dad with his hand trimmer working on the bushes in our front yard. His trimmer looked like giant scissors. My dad always chopped the bushes too short, and my mother always complained.

When I used to mow my own lawn, I had a hand mower because back then my lawn was so small, just the front of the house. I also had hand trimmers. Now, I have a landscaper who has all the tools, the noisy tools. I do have to admit, though, my lawn and my yard have never looked better.