Cross your fingers

We sprung our clocks ahead an hour Friday night — or I should say I sprung ‘em — to avoid the early-week fatigue from losing an hour of sleep but it didn’t help. Six o’clock still seemed like 5:00 a.m. to me on Monday morning.

I suppose it could also have something to do with a full moon coming at the same time as Daylight Saving Time, and the primary election (election fatigue) as well. At press time on Tuesday the polls were still open, so how the voting went in Scott County was yet to be determined. The results will be on our website at www.sctonline.net Wednesday and for those that don’t have Internet, results will be posted in next week’s print edition.

On top of losing an hour (or more) of sleep, all the weird phenomenons that some say are associated with full moons, all the election hoopla and some really strange characters involved there, the news of the very contagious coronovirus that, as of this writing, we’ve been spared from here in Mississippi, and the ups and downs of the stock market, this work week will end with a Friday the 13th.

Geez! And to think bad things are supposed to come in threes!

Oh, and I think I read that we could get more rain in the coming days. Ouch!

We’re trying to get some land cleared and I’m beginning to wonder if the weather is ever going to cooperate. I’m afraid the highly evasive bamboo cane and privet hedge will have already claimed another foot or two of the yard before it ever gets dry enough for the mulching man to mulch it all down.

Plus the super  highly evasive flowering vine known as Wisteria has already started making its march across the land once again. Kudzu has nothing on cane, privet and Wisteria. Nothing!

To add insult to injury, my grandfather and great-grandfather, both of whom claimed our house as home long before we did, planted all this stuff. My mom used to say her grandfather, Daddy Jim, planted the Wisteria at the end of the porch to shade his napping place from the heat of the day. She said my grandfather, Herbie, planted the cane and privet to block the winter wind off of the old fig tree.

Both plans worked at some point, I suppose, but the lack of upkeep between the time of their deaths decades ago and wife, Danny, and I taking charge of said upkeep about 10 or 12 years ago caused major problems. Add in a bunch of downed trees and lingering stumps from Hurricane Katrina 15 years ago that limited lawn mower access and the problems quickly multiplied/invaded.

Today the privet will grab you and never let you go if you wander in the back woods very long, and the cane has long since swallowed up the fig tree all together. When it comes to napping on the porch, Daddy Jim’s cot has been gone for as long as I can remember, and we now have a swing in that spot. We do our best to keep the Wisteria cut back so it can not reach out and strangle us, and everything around, as we take an afternoon glide, but we do keep a sharp machete close by just in case.

Readers can see that we don’t need any more rain, anytime soon, so the mulching man can do his magic and make the old home place all pretty and clear again. And, we certainly do not need any bad luck come Friday.

I do have to wonder, though, what things will be like up on our hill once the mulching man has come and gone. Right now there is a pretty thick barrier of brush on two, almost three, sides of the house. The old place has always taken a lot of wind from the north, but the south side has been decently sheltered.

It seems that although that cane and privet never helped much with the winter wind, summer storms blowing in from the south were blocked off. With a little good luck, and good weather, we should know how it is all going to work out by the first day of spring.

Cross your fingers!