It snowed on my mulch and the mulch by the car froze on it. I suppose that sets the tone for this summer, which is looking like a shaggy landscape  by a little known company: Old Lady is Me Landscaping. I should put the words on separate little signs so pedestrians can read them one after the other just like the old Burma Shave signs on the highway. Right there is evidence I am an old lady. Good Heavens, I remember reading them while standing on the hump on the floor of the back seat in an old sedan.

I have here in Kendallville a postage stamp yard, but you know, it feels bigger when measured in bending and picking up twigs and chores that use other muscles.  You have to sigh; I mean you pick up a stick and then what do you do? Stand there and hold it? No, you have to take it to a pile and then go out for more. I wish someone would invent a wood magnet. Oh, I didn’t think that through. A tree would no doubt fall on me.

I got desperate and called for a pile of mulch; it is just too much hassle to pack up bag after bag of mulch, or so I thought. Now I have a pretty big pile of mulch and I stuck a shovel in it. I have a feeling it is going to be me, the shovel and my wheelbarrow dealing with this mulch. Too bad you can’t train ants to pick up a piece on their hard-working little bags and take it to a designated spot. I mean if they are going to call them Army ants, lets get some work out of them. It would probably be better than digging latrines.

I was sitting here with my Kindle, thinking that I had not posted anything for a while and that  maybe I needed a sign to let me know if I should. It thundered. Really. So I suppose I should take off my tinfoil hat and take my chances with Alien transmissions while it is lightning.

I am trying to decide what sort of hat I should wear to guard against weird political transmissions from crazy candidates. You know, somewhere I have the cow hat that I used to wear to cheer up Mrs. Feller at the nursing home. Actually, I don’t know if I cheered her up; it may have been that I got her mind off the monotony of the place as she explained to other residents that her friend AmeliaJake was “special.” I hope I wasn’t too much of an embarrassment to her.

Suddenly, I am thinking Moose hat. I don’t know why. The idea just popped into my head . . . of my gosh, is it an Alien transmission? Disguise myself as a moose and just wander onto to secret installations? But, still, I am intrigued by the idea of a Moose hat. (Not the social club ones – but one with real antlers and fuzzy fur.)

There is a remark that people make when they encounter some situation that gets in the way like a rock: It is was it is, they say and sigh. Well, of course it is what it is . . . for now; the question is what are you going to do about it. Sometimes you have to study it, think about it. and maybe if this “is” is always going to be this “is”, then how are you going to negate it or, just possibly, use it to your advantage.

You have to keep your head, think it through and remember a poetic line from John Dryden I’ve quoted before:

“I am sore wounded but not slain
I will lay me down and bleed a while
And then rise up to fight again”

It comes down to character; it always has.