Summer and I mowed the front yard – we don’t really have a lawn, but there doesn’t seem to be a word “yardmowing” . . . not that that has stopped me before. We picked up sticks and she mowed and then I mowed and then she mowed and then I mowed. When we were in the non-mowing phase, we pulled and cut little Christmas lights off of the two huge bushes by the front door.

The Christmas light thing isn’t as bad as it seems; they wind all around the branches and the wind rearranges them and makes certain they are caught up on several branches at once. They freeze like that; they get iced over; they get buried in snow . . . and fortunately they blend in with the dense leafless sticks that make up our winter bushes. Usually, we cut them off much earlier than this, but for some reason we didn’t get around to it as soon this year . . . Perhaps because days of sun didn’t get around to us for a long time this year?

Whatever, they are down now, but as my husband says, “It is almost time to put them up again.” Well, not really, but before we get too far into winter. I know what it is like to stand out there in December with a bitter wind, low temperatures and sometimes snowflakes. Oh, it’s fun to laugh about it in memory mode, but while you are doing it, it can be brutal – especially if a string goes defective not before it is put up, but right after. Swearing during the Christmas season . . . tsk, tsk.

I have wandered a far piece from the mowing theme. Well, it was the first of the season . . . and we still have the back to do. I am thinking of the days when it will be HOT out there, and HUMID. Those are the times I imagine a bunch of people with lawnmowers lined up. They start their engines; they march across the yard side-by-side and finish it just that fast. They kind of look like that network group that shows up in one of the cellphone company commercials . . .