Delay of Game

“What are you brooding about today?”

I am standing in the kitchen staring out the back window at the lawn. Cheryl has snuck up behind me with a steaming cup of coffee.

“I want five months, just five months. Is that too much to ask?” I grumbled. “I mean, it’s October 14^th. I should have mowed the lawn for the last time but look at it. It’s still growing! It’s got to be that flippin’ El Niño.”

“Are you wishing for cold and rain?” she asked.

“No, but I am wishing for less work and I’m on a time schedule. You see, I know that in late March or April the spring grass is going to start madly growing and that will begin my seven months of yardwork, so the sooner it stops growing now, the more time off I’ll have until it starts growing again. I also told Chris at the mower shop that I would bring the mower in as soon as I stopped mowing so he could winterize it, but each week I look at the lawn and it needs a mowing again.”

“Yes, but look at the hanging baskets. They still have blooms on them. Don’t they look pretty?”

“It’s mid-October! We don’t need hanging baskets. We need frost on the pumpkins. We need birds in the feeders. We need squirrels skittering around the porch eating from the plate of corn I set out for them. And another thing – look at the leaves on the birch tree. They are still hanging there.”

“They are so pretty. Don’t you love their golden color?”

“It’s all about mother nature’s delay of game. You see, once a year I clean out the gutters. I can’t clean them out until the leaves have fallen off the trees. What would be the point? I could clean them out today and next week we will get a strong south wind which will blow the leaves off the trees and fill the gutters back up again. I’m only doing it once. I’ve got half a mind to go out there and slap the trunk of the tree with a stick to shake those darn leaves off.”

“I can see someone with half a mind doing that, dear. Think of the positive attributes of a mild fall – we don’t have to run the furnace yet. You know how you always go into a coma when you see the heating bill each month. When El Nino really gets started, it’s the same thing each year – you stand here in the kitchen staring out the window at the rain or the snow and you are in a fowl mood because it is cold and wet outside, and you wish the weather would just warm up again.”

“Four seasons. That’s all I ask. Four on time seasons. I’m on a schedule.”

“Well since you have nothing to do but to stare out the window, why don’t you help me to move some furniture?”

“You know if I had time, I would definitely do that dear.  I think the first thing on my agenda today is to go out into the front yard and beat that birch tree with a stick.”

“My creatively impatient husband. I’ll make you some cocoa.”

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