Halloween in mid-September.

boo

I know, the candy has been out for more than a month already. It was displacing back to school stuff in New York before the kids even went, you know, back to school. But that's no reason for the rest of us to get hysterical over Halloween, when it's not even autumn yet. 

That is, unless you're the people who live down the street from me, who already started decorating. 

They put out a tremendous lawn display, but that's just for starters. After I took this picture, the inflatables started to appear, plus a giant skeleton in a stand-up coffin of some kind. Last year they were so laden with lights and other electrical effects that their power bill for October was probably larger than the other eleven months of the year combined. It becomes the kind of house where parents of small children wonder if letting the little one go to the door is worth the candy, lest Li'l Iron Man soil his armor. 

Technically lawnmowing season isn't over for the rest of us, but they've called it. However, I was amused to see that they've put a skeleton and a suitable toy to use for lawn work. 

Lawn work in hell -- even worse than in Florida.

Many memes are getting involved in this year's display. 

I hope to get some good shots when the whole thing is up and running. I can tell you that walking the dog in the dark morning and coming across their display is really a little unnerving. 

Hell, if I were a creepy monster and I wanted to hide somewhere, I'd hang in their yard until November. No one would know. 

P.S.: It's not just candy anymore! Scrub Daddy, the finest dish cleaning sponge available, has come out with a Halloween line this year. And remember, cleanliness is next to -- spookiness? 

Leaf 'em be.

Actual leaf

Things I have thought were a leaf on the lawn, but were not, or vice versa:

Garter snake

Turtle

Sock (not my own)

Pine cone

Knitted cap

Fast-food bag

Dog toy

Banana peel

Hair scrunchie (not my own)

Dog poop

Bear poop

Wallet

Phone

Another actual leaf (even sneakier)

It's not that easy bein' meme.

Busy week in the compound, which means it's time for more memes! 

Ah, just kidding -- steal 'em all you want. 

The monster returns.

Strangest things happen around here. Last year I noted that my new duck boot had been partly eaten in the middle of the night by some critter. Now, this.

What you see here is a long tether, made up of two tethers, that permits baby dog Izzy to run around like a loon in the backyard without leaving the property. At some point in the dark of night, some critter literally chewed both of them to pieces. 

This is very peculiar. The tethers were made out of cotton, so I suppose they could have provided sustenance to some creatures, or maybe they got hungry enough to think it would. But cotton is actually not good for any mammal, as far as I've been able to determine. And whatever cut these six-foot tethers into small pieces was very determined and must have stayed at it a long while. What could it be?

Before you ask, let me say that baby dog Izzy has an alibi. 

Besides, we've had three dogs on these things, and sometimes they've tried to chew them but never got far. They're tough. I'm sure any of the dogs could have chewed through in time, but look at those cuts! Neat and clean. Like they got run over by some farm machine. 

So again, what could have done this? If someone wanted to pull a prank on us, there are much worse and easier things to do so than cutting our tethers up. Even with hedge clippers, this would have been a good amount of work. Critter-wise, we have deer, groundhogs, rabbits, turtles, ducks, geese, small birds, chipmunks, snakes, squirrels, skunks, foxes, an occasional coyote, and a very occasional bobcat or bear. It's been a very mild winter, and none of them should be desperate for food, and some of them should be on vacation. 

I don't even know what could do this, or would bother. 

I never did earn my Critter Badge in Cub Scouts, so if any of you have any ideas, please drop a line in comments. I'll be sticking with petroleum-based tethers from now on.

Muddy buddy.

We used to let Tralfaz run in the yard off leash because he was very independent but (mostly) good about knowing the boundaries. We used to let Nipper do the same, but just in the backyard, where he too was able to get an idea about how far was too far. 

Izzy? Well, I was playing fetch with him yesterday -- something I've hoped to teach him to help burn off the zoomies -- and he was doing great. Until he ignored the world's greatest stick on the fourth throw and bolted into the weeds. 

Oh, he didn't get far. He didn't have to. The area is a flood basin, and within fifteen feet of our property it turns into that kind of thick, black mud that only golden retrievers and slow children seem to like. 

Goldens are duck retrievers by breed, so mud is just mother's milk to them. I should have known something like this might happen, even though Nipper was the same kind of dog and never launched himself into mud that way. 

Not Izzy -- my hands were too busy to 
get any pictures -- let's just say this is
a fair representation of the breed in action.

Fortunately I was able to stop him before he got any deeper into the quicksand, but as it was, his legs, butt, chest, and undercoat were pretty filthy. It's times like these that having a bathtub downstairs is a major blessing. 

My wife had jinxed us a little by saying just that afternoon what a good boy Izzy is, maybe the best behaved of the ones we've had to date. He's a cuddlemuffin, which is helpful. But he is a retriever of waterfowl at heart, and he's never going to scared of a little muck. 

So, I don't blame him, and I just need to be more aware of breed behaviors. All dog owners should, inasmuch as their dogs' breeds can be determined. Fazzy was a farm dog, so either I could build him a wagon to pull as I went to check the back forty (first would have to buy a back forty), or I could let him patrol the perimeter, but one way or another he was set on doing farm dog stuff. Greyhounds gotta run, corgis gotta herd, rat terriers gotta kill rats, pitbulls gotta bait bulls, and Chihuahuas gotta... be sacrificed to pagan gods? 

Well, let's just say that while a dog doesn't have to do what he was bred to do, we ought to bear in mind what he thinks he's supposed to do, and where necessary find fun murder-free activities to fulfill his mission. Since I am no duck hunter, I'll have to start Izzy on competitive fetch or something. In large, dry, fenced-off areas, for sure. 

Hither and thither.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Nah, I'll just show some pictures of where I've been lately and what they're all about. 

You all know how much I love my mulch. But this gentleman really went game. He got a pile of red mulch so big that in one of your flatter states like Florida or North Dakota it would have been considered a mountain range. Then he mulched everything, even this tree stump. 

So, what's the advantage of mulching a tree stump? Er... Well, his young kids like to play baseball, so maybe this is a warning track!   

From the window of a local Chase branch. Doesn't this look a little Christmassy to you? I guess they're stars but they look like snowflakes, most having eight points. Not sure what the idea is here. 

This is sad. After something like 30 years, the garden center/florist/café in town is closing. Actually, this is after the closing; they sold everything half off. The owners are very decent people but were getting too old for the work. They kept afloat for almost 20 years after a Home Depot and later a Lowe's moved into the area. They had a personal touch and a great location, and their plants were always in better condition than the ones at the big box stores. Still, with the competition I doubt anyone would have bought their business. 

I heard the people who did buy the property are planning to build a hotel, which is odd. This isn't the kind of town that screams "We need a Holiday Inn Express!" or the like. We shall see. 

Personal note: This store was the inspiration for Houghton Holly’s Garden Center in my MacFinster novels, although the hard-charging fictional owner, Holly Starke, is nothing like the nice people who owned this place. 

Finally, here's an interesting piece a neighbor put out on the lawn. It's a Farmall Model H tractor. The Model H was manufactured between 1939 and 1953, but I don't know the year of this one. I don't even know if it's in working condition, although it looks great. I'll let you know if I see it chugging down the street or around the yard. 

Dominant species.

I hate to keep krexing about nature, but I've come to think that the dominant species on Earth ultimately will not be humans nor cockroaches nor mosquitoes nor bacteria. I think it's going to turn out to be crabgrass. 

As far as grass goes, this stuff is mean. You try to pull it, you can't get it all. You try to poison it, and half of it stays green. You put down all kinds of chemicals, and back it comes next year. 

When all of us are gone, and our Kentucky bluegrass, our fescue, our Bahia, our buffalo and Bermuda and creeping bentgrass are toast, the crabgrass will still be here, annoying whatever mammal still lives. 

I can see it becoming an evil species, like the giant carrot man from the vegetable uprising episode of Lost in Space. 

Yeah, that guy.

While retaining its evil crabgrassy ways, it will leave Earth to go pester other life forms throughout the galaxy, impossible to ignore, get rid of, or isolate. It won't take over planets or displace other sentient life; it will just move in and not leave, like the galaxy's unemployed brother-in-law. 

At least that's how it looks to me today. Is there no hope? Why, yes, there might be, thanks to our friend BG Bear, who posted this: 

Kill it with fire! I'm not sure if this little number is available anymore, but flaming weed killers can be bought at large hardware and yard outlets. 

It's either that or we nuke the crabgrass from orbit. Easy choice, you ask me. 

New tree.

Mr. Philbin asks if I'm going to post a photo of the new tree. He hinted in a way that seemed to indicate I would be letting down the side if I didn't, having dragged you all through the traumatic loss my thundercloud plum through old age and black knot, then through the pulling out of the stump with chains and the final removal of the stump itself via root & stump picker, leaving a large hole that remained unfilled for weeks. 

I said Sir, you insult me. I left out many of these grim details when I told the story. But yes, I will invite readers to see the new red maple I put in the hole last week. And here it is. 

I know it's kind of underwhelming. Even the hole looks bad. 

The hole will be improved when I get some more dirt and some mulch this week. The tree, well -- time takes time. 

I have gotten some good plants from the big garden chains, but in this case I wanted to go to a local place with a good reputation. You know what that means: 💸💸💸 But it was worth it. The tree is more than six feet tall now, and was trained with an eight-foot-long bamboo stick, so it's straight as an arrow. Its leaves are fresh and stuck on pretty well. I won't say I got a bargain, but if it lasts as long as the other maples nearby, it could be amortized to a few bucks a year. Well worth it for the shade, the water and soil retention, and the beautification of the property. Holes in the ground usually don't lead to better property value, unless they're small and on the putting greens.

My wife winced when I told her that this hole project (har!) cost about $400, beginning to end, and it didn't make me want to jump up and cheer either. But, c'est la tree. Only God can make a tree, says Mr. Kilmer, but it was up to me to buy the thing. 

Spring fever.

Big, enormous plus sides to spring: 

Daffodils in bloom, trees slowly unfurling leaves, grass turning green once more.

Similarly, downsides: 

I woke up Monday with a crushing headache. Worst I ever had, or at least since the last time I attended 2-for-1 Tequila Night at the Fallout Bar. (Or something like that. Anyway, it was back when I would have loved a 2-for-1 booze night of any kind.) It was the kind of headache that makes you think Hmm, one of the classic stroke symptoms is described as "worst headache I ever had." And: At my age it won't be nice and slay me right off; it will leave me blind and paralyzed and in a home for thirty years. Because I can catastrophize anything. 

It woke me up about five a.m., and that woke up the dogs, and somehow I managed to get them outside and back. But the agony continued through three Advil Liqui-Gels, two arthritis-strength Tylenol, an ice pack, two shots per nostril of Afrin, and two pseudoephedrine. They eventually tamed it enough for me to get into a hot shower, as hot as I could stand it, where steam did the rest. I was tired and unfocused all day, though. (I think I had also slept funny -- not funny ha-ha -- because my neck hurt a lot, which of course I attributed to encephalitis until it went away.) 

AccuWeather said the air quality was excellent, using some standard I can't imagine. Excellent for pollinating plants, I suppose. For humans with hay fever, not so hot.

That was only half the spring-related trauma, though. My wife had been brushing out large economy-size heap o' fuzz Tralfaz, and a day later found a big ol' tick in her hair. She doesn't go rubbing her head in the weeds, or at least hides it from me if she does, so I believe she was right in saying it must have come in on the dog and transferred to her.

Her reaction to finding a tick was what you might expect. 

After smashing the beast and sending it down the toilet, I assured her that it was not a Lyme-bearing deer tick, because this tick was very large and those are very small. Somehow she did not find that as reassuring as one might have hoped.

Naturally, Fazzy had a new flea and tick collar on before the hour was out. 

So, on we go with spring, and it's soggy as an underwater Oldsmobile out there this morning. I'm glad I feel okay today, and I'm glad it wasn't a stroke. You hate to get to the age where you write a phrase like "I'm glad it wasn't a stroke," but that's what happens if you live long enough, I suppose. 

So long, tree.

Well, the tree I tried to save almost three years ago died anyway. It was a fruitless task for my fruitless plum, a thundercloud, that looked magnificent in the spring and gorgeous in the summer. Last year it only sprouted a few leaves, and by autumn I knew it was dead. 

I brought that tree home myself, in the back of my car, barely more than a sapling, from a garden center that has since closed. It took root and grew where previous trees had failed. Alas, I didn't know that they only live for about twenty years, one of the shortest life spans of cultivated trees, and it had been growing a few years when I got it. In the end there was nothing I could do. The maples nearby continue to thrive, but for the plum, its time was up. 

I only have a hatchet and some saws, and this was no job for that. Time to call in the pros. They dispatched the branches first, then pulled the stump out with truck and chain, like popping a cork. 

Sad to see it go -- by far the most successful thing I've ever planted. What's got two brown thumbs and kills plants? This guy [points to self]. Every spring when it began to flower I'd think I planted that! But alas, no more. It is gone. 

Except for the stump. They said they had to come back for it. Well, I guess they will, since I haven't paid them yet.

Now I have to figure out what to do to fill the hole. I've already had a maple and a dogwood die in that spot, each within one year. 

Maybe I can get a redwood sapling. It would annoy the neighbors. It'd take a century, but it would annoy the neighbors! 

I am prey.

Last month I was in the backyard, trying to keep Nipper the dog out of trouble, when I saw a telltale sign of invasion. 

A single yellow jacket was hovering near the grass, not close to any clover blossoms or anything else that might attract a member of the hymenoptera order. 

Sure enough, it landed and made its way into a secret hole, a hideout in the lawn itself, where a nest had been built. These were ground-nesting beasts, waiting for a careless moment when I or one of my faithful dogs would stride too near, and then attack! 

Later that day, when I was alone, I took my can of wasp spray and a bucket of dirt down to the backyard. I filled that hole completely with poison. I let it sit for a while. Then I covered it with earth. 

Job done. Except for one yellow jacket. One lone wasp that had been out on the hunt. It returned to the hole to find the entrance sealed. It hovered and bobbed, looking for a way in. 

It was now the warrior with no chief. It was the samurai with no master. It was... RONIN!!!!

!!!!

Later I was sitting on the porch... and I was buzzed by the single remaining yellow jacket. It hovered about until I was obliged to leave. This has happened again. And again. It happened at a train station one town over. It happened in a parking lot.

It will not stop. Not until it has its revenge.

You killed my master. I will kill you.

Because it is... RONIN!!!!

!!!!

There is no escape. It is not a matter of if, just a matter of when,

Because it is... RONIN!!!!

!!!!

Things are hoppin'!

As with last week, I reached a point this week where everything cascaded on me at once. That was Thursday. It started at 1:36 a.m., when large economy-size dog Tralfaz decided he had to go to the bathroom. We discourage this kind of thing, but what can you do? He really had to go.

The broken sleep was worse than usual, because the break was wide. I had trouble getting back to dreamland. So not only was it one of those days that are often called One Of Those Days, but I also faced it semi-exhausted, tired enough to feel sick. Fortunately, I was not actually sick and tired; just tired.

To make this lame blog post up to you, I want to introduce you to my newest pet. His name is Galileo Hammersmith Holyoke Snord. G. Hammersmith for short.

He is a frog, about the size of a quarter. I saw him Wednesday night on the walkway while leading smaller family-size dog Nipper out to use the lawn. G. Hammersmith was minding his own business, but since he was on my property, I declared him to be mine. He is a clever chap, whose interests include snowboarding, electric trains, and the history of avocado farming. He used to sell for Amway but switched to Tupperware. He thinks The Big Sleep is good but not as good as The Maltese Falcon. He feels that pale yellow is a good color on him. He prefers Mary Ann to Ginger, Bailey to Jennifer, and Miriam to Nancy. He can't golf, but he likes to watch it on TV. Also, he leaped into the grass and vanished a second after I took this photo.

Farewell, G. Hammersmith! Thank you for the many seconds of joy you brought us. We shall miss you. May the lawn mowers of life never darken your lily pad.

2020, on the hoof.

Was that a toy in the backyard? I can usually account for all of the dogs' playthings, because I'm the one who throws them and most of the time they remain there, being ignored by the dogs, who want to sniff and gnaw weeds instead. So yesterday morning when I spotted a long, white object off in the distance, I couldn't place it. I had Nipper with me, so while he was distracted by a weed or two, I went to check it out.

It was not a toy. It was the foreleg of a fawn, ripped off, the bloody thigh bone protruding from the knee. I gasped like a little girl.

And I'm really glad Nipper didn't key on it first.

I'm not particularly squeamish, especially about an animal I would and have eaten. Like a lot of people who are being honest, I'm mostly in favor of protections for animals in the genus Cutiepie. Like the little ducklings.

I love ducks -- on my plate -- but I have to admit ducklings are adorbs. My wife and I were sitting on the porch a few weeks back when a small army of ducklings, five in all, waddled and bonked their way toward us from the pond across the street, heads swinging right and left. Seemed like they'd gotten separated from their mother. I imagined us raising them like a family of ducks in a sixties Disney movie, but I knew it was best to get them back to their mother if possible. So I went toward them, and they literally turned tail and ran, or rather waddled and zigzagged back to the pond area.

I never had the heart to tell my wife that a couple of nights later, out with Nipper, I heard ferocious screeching and yowling across the street. I've heard lots of intramural bird fights over there, but this was different. This was the damnable circle of life in action. I figure we'll not see those ducklings again.

I was surprised though about this fawn, though. We get a good amount of foxes around here, and a few raccoons, but this was coyote or bear work. I hadn't seen any of them around, but a couple of the neighbors' trash cans had gotten the business last week, knocked over and ripped apart. I can only suppose that my can was left alone because of the large quantity of dog poop in it.

I had to get the fawn leg away from the dog, so I picked it up by the little hoof -- barely bigger than a quarter in diameter -- and chucked it in a trash bag that was waiting for the garbage truck. If it had been the leg of a full-size deer, it would have been harder to get rid of, but it would have made me less sad. Fawns and ducklings are cute, and dumb, and I just hate to see one get murdered so young. Life is hard on the little ones.

Well, be glad I didn't have my phone with me, or I might have taken a photo of the remains for a Very Special Movie Event of Bacon's Beat, reviving my mouse detective Bacon, investigator of all the roadkill I've seen around here.

That evening, by the way, I went into the back again with Nipper, and sure enough a dark coyote was making his escape through the tall grass as we entered. Come back for the foreleg, I guess. I'll be watching for him.

Oh, well. Sorry, little fawn. Just another damn creepy thing to happen in our annus horribilis, 2020. At least the coyote got to eat something he ought to eat, rather than leftover pizza crusts and tuna casserole.

Tether report.

I'm not sure if this is ironic, appropriate, timely, or just stupid.

Just last Friday morning I posted about our plan to get one of those fenceless fences to keep the dogs inside our property so they can go free without us worrying about them getting in trouble. Our commenting comrade P.L. Woodstock noted that a neighbor's dog happily got by on a tether, until some idiot busybody sneaked onto the yard at night and cut it up. 

Well, we had a tether in the backyard, which was very useful when our dogs were puppies and didn't know or listen to anything. I was still obliged to use it occasionally when certain dogs were in a particular mood to misbehave, but I hadn't actually used it since last fall. So I was thinking once we had the fence installed I could pull the tether post up -- although when other friends' dogs are visiting it has proved to be useful. So maybe I should leave it...?

Then, Friday afternoon, this happened. 

What you see here, on the floor of my garage, is what is left of a tether post and the tether when it has been run over by a three-blade 800-pound lawn mower. Well, after I dug what was left out of the ground. 

Longtime readers will know that I took great pride in cutting my own damn grass, but when I started to have back issues I had to stop. Time also became an issue; what is a two-hour job for me is a fifteen-minute job for the boys on their huge riding machines. Who ran over the tether post on Friday. I've been using the same outfit for more than a year now, so it's not like the metal post in the middle of the yard leaped up and surprised them. 

No one said anything, although I have to think this played hell with the machine blade. This is about a two-foot length of steel, totally bent, the top handle sheared right off (I still haven't found it). The nylon cord wrapped around the thing was cut into a hundred fuzzy little pieces; the driver had to have seen this. 

Despite the damage to the post, it was still firmly wedged in the ground. The thing had been a real bear to install, and I did it by putting a hard length of wood through the top handle and twisting it in like a screw. It was not easy. Saturday afternoon I dug it up, because with the handle gone and the shaft bent there was no way to screw it back out. 

So, like I say, the timing of this incident sure was weird. Is it karma? A sign that the electric fence was the right move? Or just a heedless worker rushing through a job and not paying attention? Or it is plain irony, that the service I engaged to save my achin' back led to me digging with a spade in hard, sun-baked dirt?  

Froggone it.

Lawn and garden decorations always interest me. I'm old enough to remember when there were still a few jockeys and Mexican burros around, but you seldom see them anymore.  I've written about gnomes and deer and concrete planters and Mary and St. Francis. But I am only now starting to see Frog Princes. 

And they, me.

Wayfair has several, Amazon does, Home Depot.... None of them look like the chubby chap shown here, but they're all frogs wearing crowns, so they count.

Honestly, when I first saw this guy I wondered what he was for. I thought the crown was some kind of rack for holding something. Maybe citronella, or a chunk of suet for birds?

Sorry I didn't recognize you, your highness!

But why frog princes? Why now? These things are tangentially tied to cultural movements, near as I can see; the burros, for example, seemed to appear when American culture's focus shifted more toward California from the Eastern cities, and to our southern neighbors from our European friends. What culture leads to frog princes?

Disney? But none of them look like the frog prince from The Princess and the Frog. The Disney Store doesn't even sell lawn sculptures, let along frog ones. So it's not Disney.

What are these frogs for? Are you supposed to kiss them? Is there some ritual connected to these I don't know about? If you kiss the lawn frog will it turn into a prince? Will it magically repel bugs? Is this heathenism? Should I call my priest?

Don't ask me. I never know what's going on. Least of all anything to do with royalty, or frogs.

Halloween roundup.

I know you're probably thinking hard about Christmas now, but before we say farewell to Halloween I'd like to just compare notes. I didn't do it yesterday because of I was focused on All Saints' Day and the hollow excuse for a human being who committed the attack in Manhattan. Today let's put aside the religious and moral element of the holiday and of current events and cut to the other stuff:

DECORATIONS
Like a lot of Americans, I tend to treat Halloween like spring training for the Christmas season. Instead of a lot of lights, I put up one string of sickly green or orange on the porch. Instead of decorations all over the house, I put a few pumpkin things in the window. Stuff like that. And instead of getting the decor in place ASAP following Thanksgiving, I might put up the Halloween things a couple of weeks in advance of the day. This year I had no time and little inclination as we have been doing several home projects. So I waited until Halloween itself, grabbed a few must-haves (including the string of lights), and got it all in place that afternoon. Not one kid remarked on my lack of preparation.

Even though my pumpkins looked
a little droopy.

WEATHER
The day before Halloween was rainy, windy, and quite cold; really good for actual ghouls and spooks and witches but terrible for children. Fortunately it cleared up and was just chilly. Did not see one single child who had to wear a parka over his or her costume, though.

COSTUME
Meaning my costume. I usually have a funny hat or mask available for door opening, but skipped it this year. Briefly during the day I drove with a mask on, but that wasn't as much fun as I'd expected.

TRICK-OR-TREATERS
When we first moved into this neighborhood everyone had at least one child under ten and they all demanded candy. Since then it's been a big decline. However we have bounced back some after the nadir of 2014, and the pond has been restocked with little squirts. We had many a ring on the doorbell. Which annoyed the heck out of the...

DOGS
At first the big guy, Tralfaz, and the little guy, Nipper, were getting all barky every time a small pair of shoes thumped up the steps. I had to keep them quarantined from the foyer, as I do when the FedEx man has something for us. (They think he's up to something.) One of Nipper's tricks is to run into the room next to the front door and bark through the window. A little boy saw Nipper, and rather than be scared, the kid rushed to the window to see Nipper, who really has a cute I-wanna-play face even when he's using his big-boy bark. The boy was thrilled; must be a dog lover. After a while our guys started to calm down, and hardly fussed at all for the last half dozen doorbell rings. And speaking of the dogs...

LAWN
One thing I realized four years ago (Tralfaz's first Halloween) was that, to be a decent human being, you have to be particularly careful that all dog poop is off the lawn, because no matter how good a kid is, they know on Halloween that time is candy, so they're going to cut across the front lawn if it gets to them to the next house faster. I successfully performed my lawn examination this year. I don't bother checking the back that closely, though. Any kid cutting across my backyard deserves what he gets.

CANDY
We went through two bags of Nestle's Crunch, one Butterfinger, one Baby Ruth, and the majority of a big sack of Milky Ways. Not bad at all. Left with a small bag of Snickers, the rest of the Milky Ways, and a dozen emergency popcorn balls. We've had years of running short and years of way overbuying; this is about as close to right-on as we've ever gotten.

TRICKS
No tricks pulled on us. Trees safe. Nothing mysterious on porch. All clear.

CURFEW
The town's curfew for kids had been eight o'clock since Saturday, and our last callers came at 7:30. Unplugged the lights at eight and ate candy. Whee!

AFTERMATH
Nothing much to report -- the dogs were psyched outside, sniffing the scents of the army of children and their escorts. No sign of any mean tricks having been played on anyone. No visits from surly teenagers with perfunctory costumes. Success!

NEXT YEAR
I have to say, barring any major life changes, I'm just going to follow exactly the same plan again next year. It went great. If the weather is warmer we might get more kids, but what we had leftover candywise would handle them.

YOU
So, how'd you make out? Love to hear your comments below. Or drop me a line at frederick_key AT yahoo DOT com. Always glad to hear from fiends --- uh, friends. Mwah ah ah

Lawn in the tooth.

Continuing the theme from yesterday's post....

While music on the iPhone was keeping me company as I was struggling through the near-fatal mowing of my lawn, I got to thinking about the way music has been written, packaged, and marketed universally to the immature and the immature of heart, including your correspondent here. It's become a commonplace to laugh at geezers singing "Won't Get Fooled Again" now, while waving their canes and Social Security checks. Oh, yeah, gramps, that's right. Fight the power. Guess what: You ARE the Man.

Knowledgeable critics like Mark Steyn write often about the infantilization of American pop music, and yet if we look back in the history of popular culture we find that even when our popular music was intended for all ages, cranking out songs about Mom and exotic places and the old country and patriotism and making fun of others, it probably most often dealt with those perennially popular youth topics, like love, romance, moonlight, novelty dances, and such. These may make great songs, but they're not songs of the middle aged.

And that's why music has in its way become a drag on the culture. We can't grow up because our hearts are in our youth, and the music of our youth, whenever that happened to occur. It's one reason for our wacky politics nowadays--no one has the cultural muscle to deal with serious consideration and difficult choices. That's dull old-folks stuff.

No one is writing songs about paying the mortgage, sustaining commitments, achieving success after decades of toil, empty nests, or cutting the freaking lawn. Youth is written in poetry, I suppose, but life is mostly written in prose.

Until now!

I certainly don't have a solution for our maturity shortage. We all have to come to grips with it as we age. Growing up is hard, which is why most of us try the hell not to. All I can do is provide some lyrics for use by crafty tunesmiths for songs of more common middle-age concerns, like:

MOW THE LAWN

Grass grows high
The wife complains
Neighbors think I've gone insane
Kid just sulks
Won't do crap
But the dog did all over the map
Mow the lawn!
Kill the weeds!
Cut those things like you make 'em bleed
The grass has blades!
And it fights back!
Pull my cord and start the attack!

[chorus]
MOW THE LAWN
MOW THE LAWN
MOW THE LAWN

[drum solo]

Okay, well, it does bring to mind Zevon's "Model Citizen," but at least it's not about diapers or periodontal surgery or Viagra.

So my question to you is: Can you think of any pop songs that celebrate the events of life beyond the ones we associate with our teens and twenties?

The lawn and short of it.

I've often wondered if our culture is ever going to break free of the tyranny of the young, with songs and movies and TV shows and whatnot directed to people between the ages of 10 and 25. I was particularly thinking about this while mowing the lawn and listening to music, because so many of the songs I've collected digitally are from my youth, and are almost unseemly for a man over the age of 35.

Yeah, it was a tough mow. In the last week we've had more and more rain. No fooling -- I've never seen a mushroom cap the size of a baseball on the lawn, until now.

Fungus amongus.

That rust on the tree I was worried about last week? Reader G. (I can't divulge his name, which is Garry) gave me the tip that it's fungus. Thank you, Mr. G! I probably should have guessed. There's mold everywhere else. If the dogs loaf too long on the lawn they start turning green.

By the time I was able to get at that grass it was long and damp -- almost too much for my electric mower to handle. As I noted before, it's a keen machine but if the blade gets overloaded, the computer chip goes into overload and the whole thing shuts down. Then you have to wait, and wait, and wait for the thing to calm down and get over it before it will green-light you again.

So this took some time. Plus it was a hot, swampy day. There's a slope in the backyard, which means the very last part of the job finds the dampest, thickest grass, which means that just when I was a-fixin' to plotz the most, the mower conked out most often.

Stupid turf.

I ought to mention that I am blessed with a good bit of lawn, but too much for my little normal-size push mower. My neighbors tend to have riding mowers, or more commonly they get the grass cut by a service like the Home Depot Parking Lot Caballeros. I suspect I'm the neighborhood idiot, but it wouldn't be the first time. Well, mo lawn, mo problems.

What I did ultimately was take the string trimmer out, and every time the mower died and I had to wait out its hissy fit, I weed-whacked the remaining grass. This way when I finally could cut the grass it would be shorter, and at that rate maybe drier. When I got done at last I was glad to be alive. If this lawn mowing job didn't kill me, no lawn mowing job can. Hey, look out, Highlander! There Can Be Only One.

So what does all this have to do with music? We'll find out tomorrow, maybe. Stay tuned....

Assault on battery.

Black Beauty, my gas-powered lawn mower, bit the dust.

A moment of silence, please.

It was barely operating at the end of last season, and as I got it tuned up this spring I realized there were some serious problems. Like, part of the chassis had ripped up around a bolt that held on the motor, so every time I pulled the cord the motor was getting closer to pulling off the chassis entirely. It was time to call it.

Fortunately I have another mower handy, a battery-powered one made by Ego that my wife bought me a couple of years ago. It's a good machine, much quieter than the gas mower, and cuts well, requiring no gas, no oil, no spark plug, no air filter. There are, however, some problems --- one related to the dumbest safety feature I have ever seen, but all the rest related to the battery.

Quickly, the dumb thing: The handle retracts for easy storage (the mower weighs nothing), but when one of the plastic clamps that holds the handle extended pops out, it stops running. So the operation of the machine is entirely at the mercy of a cheap bit of plastic, which by the way now pops out every time any torque is put on the handle, like if you might want to turn or something. So I have had to clamp it in place to keep the machine operating. That's poor design.

As for the battery, it's the same old same old. The real reason we're not all driving electric cars now has nothing to do with evil gas companies or evil car companies. It's the damned batteries. I'm no engineer, so I'll eschew the science lingo, but allow me to describe the six serious problems I have observed with batteries:

1) Short life: I have to recharge the battery three times to get my lawn done; four times if I'm dealing with wet or long grass (and as I mentioned a few days ago, these are not uncommon circumstances). I don't have the rapid charger Ego makes, so it's half an hour or more to a full charge. You get at least 45 minutes of mowing, so it's a net gain, but it's still very frustrating. What happens when you and your electric car are stuck in traffic for a long time?

2) Long recharge: As I say, the recharge takes quite a while and stops the whole mission cold. This is not a problem with a gas mower -- fill it and go. But the load time for large batteries is considerable. For the country to have fleets of electric cars running around, gas stations would have to be replaced with battery exchanges, where universal batteries that fit every car could be exchanged for charged batteries. You couldn't just have plug-in stations where people get the car zapped and go on their way, like in the Watchmen comic book. Batteries that load like that have not been invented.

3) Instability: Weird things can happen with batteries. If I hit a thick, wet spot of grass with a gas mower it might stall out. The clog can be cleared and the mower restarted. If I do that with the Ego, the battery gets overloaded and has to shut down. The whole thing can discharge. It doesn't make it unsafe, or more so than gasoline, but it is another level of inconvenience, because you have to give it time to cool down.

4) Environmental hazards: Two things about batteries that make them less enviro-friendly than people may think: a) The juice still has to be generated somewhere, and it's not going to be solar and wind but almost entirely natural gas, coal, and nukes; b) Batteries are basically micro-Superfund sites of toxic materials. This doesn't relate to problems with my mower, but it's interesting. Storing energy is a lot harder than people think. Nature's spoiled us by storing it underground in delicious oil.

5) Price: Yes, I could buy a second Ego battery and have one charging while I use the other, but their cheapest lawn mower battery (2.0 amp) is $129. Their most expensive one (7.5 amp) is $386, the price of a good gas push mower.

6) Energizer vs. Duracell: Most Americans are aware that Energizer has a pink bunny mascot, but not that rival Duracell does too. Really!

Duracell's is actually older, but was only seen outside the U.S., so the two reached a deal in 1992, because obviously there's no way to sell consumer batteries without the use of pink battery-powered rabbits. That hasn't stopped the lawsuits, and there's one wheezing through the courts now. Couldn't one of them have been a tortoise? (Tortoise beat hare, as you know.) Or at least a green rabbit?

So those are my battery issues. I do have to say that thanks to my battery-powered mower and my clamp and the beautiful weather, I got everything cut yesterday, so I really shouldn't complain. It beats an old-fashioned push reel mower. Power to the people!

April showers bring angry grouches.

Enough with the cotton-pickin' rain!

Pictured: More rain.

We haven't had thunderstorms or the like, not in a couple of weeks, but April in New York has been like what Portland, Oregon, is reputed to be. Hard rain with long periods of drizzle. We haven't seen the sun in some time. I'm afraid it's gotten to be a red giant, it's been so long.

Some days it has not rained that much, just inevitably enough to make it impossible for me to mow the hilly jungle outside with my dinky lawn mower. Yes, it's all about me, ultimately, and my inability to tend to my lawn. Well, that and I'm sick of drying off the dogs. The big guy got groomed Wednesday and spent a chunk of Thursday morning exploring mud puddles. Yay.

But getting back to me. This wet grass really is a problem, because my old push mower is just not powerful enough to cut wet grass that's very tall, very thick, as it is in large patches. (I could almost tolerate the situation if the lawn was uniformly lush like that, but of course it mostly sucks again this spring, which means that all this suffering won't mean a good lawn anyway.) The previous lawn mower died in just such a situation, stalling constantly, unable to get through the high and wet grass.

I could try to be patient and hope that the sun returns and either destroys the Earth as a red giant star, in which case it won't matter, or dries out the lawn. But that would take days, and with grass this thick it might not even dry it out enough. Meanwhile the lawn is a breeding ground for snakes, bugs, and other things I don't want my dogs to encounter, nor do I want to encounter them myself.

Every day I've thought I could get out there and start it, and what do you know---whatever the forecast said, it's raining!

The weather might as well send me text messages.

Maybe I could buy some goats.