and another thing.....

It's hotter than Hell here and everyone is wiping sweat off their brows, complaining about the heat. Mind you, these are the same folks who complained about the snow, ice and cold a few months ago.  The problem is, we in Northern New York are not accustomed to hot, humid weather day after day.  A couple of days a summer and we can take it, but more than that and we tend to become a bunch of whining brats.

The grocery store is the place to see the most complaining. People linger by the freezer section making all kinds of excuses to stay there and not make a move to any other part of the store. Consequently you have traffic jams in the aisles.  The other shoppers have to wiggle around the people who are pretending to have a reason to stand with the doors of the freezer wide open.   I stood there watching one guy as he opened and shut the freezer at least three times... I could tell he was using the door as a fan.  I don't blame him, it was really hot, but I wondered how long he was going to be able to do that until someone from the store put a stop to it.  

I walked away from that little action and nearly ran over a lady in the aisle holding Ben and Jerry pints to the side of her head.  She looked like she was in ice cream heaven.   The other side of the aisle sat a younger woman with two bags of peas on top of her head.   It's hot, but it's not that bad, of course we have air conditioning and we're kind of spoiled. 

In years past, up here in Northern New York we were in the minority with our central air.  It really was a luxury to have air in the houses.  We seldom had prolonged heat and humidity.   We could get along with fans and open windows.  It's not that way now.  When it gets hot here, it stays hot for many days.

My gardens are overwhelmed with water.  In the Spring one of the big oak trees was struck (again) by lightning and it was time to chop it down.  The tree grew from a little acorn when we first moved in here in 1968.  We've watched the tree grow over the years.  It housed tire swings, hammocks, assorted climbing things and it was the climbing tree.   The mighty oak was over 30 feet high when it took it's fatal hit from above.  The hit could be felt in the house.  The sound was like a huge truck hitting a brick wall.  We knew that was the last hit the tree could take.

The tree removal guys came.  They looked the tree up and down and decided the best course of action to remove the tree was to climb up to the top, cut off the top, remove branches as they came down.  There was no way the tree could be dropped without the prep work. It was too big.

It was sad to see it go.  I stood at my back door and watched the guys de-frock the tree and leave a tall telephone like pole standing.  They took down the trunk in sections and as each part was falling to the ground my tears were falling on my cheeks.   It's sad to see something that's grown up as yo watched fall to the ground.   As each part fell memories flooded my thoughts about all the fun the kids in the neighborhood had with that tree.  

Now the tree is in small pieces in the carport.  It will continue to give us pleasure, but this time it will be with heat and ambiance as it burns in the fireplace.   I guess that's what life is about ...birth, death and rebirth...and that can mean anything you want it to mean...

The removal of the tree has opened up that part of the yard to the sun.  The result of the new sunny part of the yard is, I have tons of new plants popping their heads out of the ground.  The tree had been shading the herb garden, now the herb garden is going nuts with growth and  huge plants. Around the garden there are 10' high tiger lilies blooming and an assortment of other flowers that came from somewhere, I didn't plant them but they came anyway.  

So the sun and heat are not all that bad. The heat helps bring new life into the yards  The rain feeds all the flowers and plants.  We should have a bumper crop of veggies this year with all the rain and sun. We'll see.