I have little patience for extremes. People who believe in zodiac signs would say it's the Libra in me. I like my world balanced, with all things in moderation. I prefer to have "enough" of everything, neither too little nor too much. If I could convince my body to agree, I would happily be a size medium for the rest of my life, not thin, not fat. I am happiest in the milder seasons, spring and fall, and I get grumpy in summer and winter. Last year, I spent weeks complaining that it never stopped raining. This year my house must have be sitting under a giant umbrella, because nary a drop of rain has come down on us lately. Anytime scattered storms push through to the coast, I watch the radar as they twist and contort to avoid raining on me. And whereas last year it took forever for the temperatures to reach 90 degrees, this year we hit that mark early, and have topped it nearly every day for weeks. Heat and humidity take too much out of me. I'm finding it difficult to get outside and take care of things again. I'm going to have to convince myself to go to bed at a reasonable hour, so I can be running the lawn mower before the heat sets in. When would that be, exactly? Probably 7:30 or so.
I made it pretty far into the warm season (it's still not summer for two days??) before the pests took over my Park again. It's better than last year, but I still have to dig deep to face them. My bug zapper bulb already burned out. I thought it was supposed to be okay plugged in 24/7 for a month or so, but maybe I needed to have it on a timer. I will go through the Christmas decorations to find one, as soon as I get that replacement bulb. The spiders have returned, en masse. They are still small, those banana spiders, but they are starting to grow. They were tiny when I first started seeing them in the rungs of my tomato cages, maybe a half an inch across including the legs. Now the ones who hang out on the front porch are twice as big, or maybe a bit bigger. Two days ago, I stopped short of crossing through the posts onto the front porch with the water hose, when I noticed there was a web across the front entrance, with a banana spider who covered as much surface area as a quarter camped in the middle of it. She would have hit me square in the chest had I walked onto the porch. I sprayed my geraniums over top of her web, and told her in no uncertain terms that she was not to have the web in the same spot the next day. So yesterday I went outside to see whether she believed me. She did not. In fact, she took offense to my suggestion that she move, and she made a double-thick web. Before I went out to fertilize a rosebush with old coffee grounds, I grabbed the outdoor broom, and pushed her around into the bushes. She wasn't back today, but I am not convinced I have won this battle yet.
Rodents are proving to be a problem again this year. Every single tiny watermelon that grows on my two lovely plants gets eaten by somebody who does not have permission to be on the deck. I'm thinking it's time to go ahead and get one of those sonic rodent deterrent devices. I've been talking about it for a year. I harvested the first okra pod I have grown in almost twenty years today, although I haven't eaten it yet to know whether it's good. I have hopes. The one and only tomato that ripened so far had blossom end rot. I thought I was doing so well preventing that, with all the eggshells in the soil and even watering. What more must I do? I always think of that Shirley MacLaine line from Steel Magnolias, when she explains that she is an old southern woman, so naturally she wears funny hats and grows tomatoes. Maybe I need to start wearing a hat.
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