HAPPY AUGUST!!

It's SEVENTY-ONE here this morning---hasn't drifted that low since perhaps at a midnight or two, in a month, it seems.    We have guests coming for the FAIR this weekend, and a date to bake zucchini bread, some good lingering-over-breakfast catching-up to do, as well as several birthdays on over in the month.

Weather bids to ease up a bit, everything on the lawn is twice its usual size, and I can hardly see the back gate, for all the shrubbery and overgrown limbs and Rose of Sharon grown to magnolia proportions.  The tomatoes are bowing gracefully toward the grass, the grapevine has trapezed from garage to house in two places, stretching out long groundward lianas worthy of a Tarzan-swing---I have to keep tucking great strands of it back and up, weaving the long arms back into itself, else we'd be barred from the back sidewalk and the garbage cans.

You know, I SO love the lush verdance, the over-done creep of all the vines and ivy and grapes, but I KNOW our neighbors just shake their heads at these ole Down-South folks, just dreading the time that we drag out the '49 Ford chassis or the old Maytag into the shade for decor.   I suppose they'd be thankful that we don't still have the cracked toilet demolished by Chris in that unfortunate champagne debacle.

This was a quiet, calm weekend spent in house-cleaning and floor scrubbing and putting-away of all the collected extras on tabletops, floor and corners--we've hired an extra sherpa to scale the piles in the store-room---this one is just to retrieve canned goods and groceries from the unreachable shelves, and to chase down the dozen fleeing tubs of Play Doh which escaped their box and scurried down into folds of bags and toys.  Best not to mention the Cootie-feet drifting down into the stacks of books).

While we try to hack our way through overgrowth, inside and out, making order, making room---I wish all of you a HAPPY AUGUST!!