According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, the Dog Days of Summer should have ended more than a week ago as Almanac writers say they officially run from July 3 until August 11. If the last week are so is any indication, it seems to me that their editors need to recalculate that time frame. Be it global warming — if one believes in that sort of thing — the mysterious meteor some saw Saturday night, or just Mississippi in the middle of August, it is hot.
Saturday’s rain did make things a bit more pleasant, be it briefly, and being stranded indoors it allowed for the opportunity to do some needed chores. I opted to clean off the front porch.
It’s amazing what one can find on their front porch when it’s huge and been accumulating for years. Don’t ask why, because I don’t remember why, but we have an old, wringer type washing machine on our porch. I suppose we were going for the Appalachian look years ago when we first started working on the house as a family weekend get-away spot.
Now that we live there, the washing machine really ought to be moved to the back porch — its original location in days of old — but the back porch has to be rebuilt before that move may be made. So, for now, it’s a front porch catch all. I cleaned it out as the needed rain ran off our old tin roof into the front flower beds on Saturday.
Inside, low and behold, there were not one, not two, but three hand-held trimmers used for cutting grass from around the front steps. We wondered where those were each time we bought a new pair. Now we are set...set, set!
There was also an electric fence charger and enough wire to reach out and around the pea patch to keep the deer out. There is no longer a pea patch out there, but we do still have deer, although I’ve not seen them in a while. A late freeze and dry weather dried up the pear crop and that was their favorite gathering spot in years past. Come to think about it, I’m not so sure the fence kept the deer out of the peas anyway.
On the electrical side of things there was also an old, orange extension cord that apparently had been run over by the lawnmower or bush hog at some point, and I suppose we had good intentions of putting all those little pieces back together again like Humpty Dumpty. That never happened but I did put it out in the barn just in case I get a wild hair at some point soon.
There was also an old, yellow Slip and Slide from back when we had Slip and Slide-size children in the family which was a loooong time ago. I couldn’t part with it either — just in case we old folks get the urge.
There was lots of stuff that had long ago melted to other stuff, and stuff that had deteriorated beyond identification. It all went into a garbage bag and into the trash. As a matter of fact, by the time I was done there was a 30 gallon garbage bag full of stuff that should have been put in the same type container years ago, but then again, we were probably thinking “just in case.” I’m still not sure why we were saving the Orange Crush bottle.
The only real treasure that I found — besides those clippers, of course — was a set of my grandmothers wind chimes that came down in the winds of Hurricane Katrina 13 years ago tomorrow, which, by the way, was also the start of those back porch woes we are experiencing. I’m sure somebody said back then that they would re-string the chimes and we put the parts away for safe keeping.
Sunday morning I made good on that promise and pulled out some 50 lb. test fishing line, and while drinking coffee in the sun out on the front porch went to work setting those old chimes to chiming again. That’s also when I came to the conclusion that the time has come to recalculate the dates of the Dog Days of Summer.
