Yesterday Cameron and I were at Mother’s, killing weeds and doing some more mowing. And, by the way, the ball fell off of the gearshift on the Toro; I fear I may have run over it. Luck wasn’t with me in finding it so I’ll have to find something to screw on it. But, that’s that. We brought a bag of charcoal with us and lighter fluid and hot dogs and little sausages and we cooked them in the little red Weber grill.

Just the two of us – my teaching him about charcoal fires and draughts and our coming back periodically to see how things were progressing. I had looked for the short piece of stove pipe with holes punched in the bottom with an old fashioned can opener to help the coals progress but didn’t find it until I backed over it with a mower and flattened it. That is another story; actually, I guess I just told it. Come to think of it, maybe that is why the Toro threw its gearshift ball on the ground.

We didn’t bustle the way folks do here with the gas grill. As we waited for the stuff to get all brown and hot, we sat on mis-matched chairs from the deck and sipped soda out of the cooler. My hot dogs tasted really good on the whole grain Aunt Millie buns – so much better than the gas heated ones. And Cameron toasted his buns – just as my mother used to do. I think some things are in the genes. He also prefers stoneware to acrylic plates.

I mixed up a mean bunch of weed killer in the spray tank and we will see how effective it turns out to be; I have a kill everything bottle of stuff in reserve for the fence lines, but figure we need experience with the more forgiving week killer first. One year Quentin and I used the strong stuff and didn’t realize we were dripping as we went from site to site. The yard looked perforated that year.

The dandelions have been sneaky this year – I will go into that later. Now time to go to school . . . for Summer.