Busy day. Any day with over 24,000 steps is a busy day in my book. I finally got caught up on a number of chores I've been trying to avoid. I started by removing the standing water from the roof. A lot of the water had already evaporated because it hasn't rained for several days, but there was still plenty of water that needed to be removed. If I leave the water too long, algae starts to grow. It's a mess.
While I was up on the roof, I noticed that some scrub bushes on the Western side of the carport had been cut. I didn't do this, although I'd been meaning to remove the bushes for months. I asked Janet and she didn't remove the bushes either. It must have been my neighbor. Weird. Why would anyone come on my property and remove these bushes? Sure they were ugly, but they weren't hurting anything. I wonder when this happened? It could have been months ago. I never go on that side of the house.
While I was waiting for the electric mower to get charged, I removed some vines that were taking over a Hackberry tree in the front yard. These troublesome vines seem to come back every year and if I don't remove them, they will kill the tree. My ongoing battle with nature is never ending. Fire ants and weeds keep trying to overtake the front yard. Dead limbs from the large Oak trees periodically fall in the back yard. Water is always trying to penetrate the roof. I get tired of fighting these battles, but what is the alternative? Living in a downtown high-rise certainly isn't the answer. I'll take weeds and ants over noisy neighbors and a homeowners association any day.
After I finished mowing the grass, the yard looked a lot better. Around this time of year I start thinking that I might not have to mow any more, but I'm usually wrong. If we have a mild Winter, I often have to mow in December. We live so near the park that all kinds of seeds blow into the yard and weeds of all kinds proliferate. Sometimes I try to pretend that the weeds are grass. I mowed a little patch of them in the back yard today and they don't look half bad.
We had a nice walk this morning. Maybe the cooler weather really is here for good. The leaves haven't started to turn yet, but it is definitely starting to feel like Fall. The sky looked a little odd today. It was a clear day, but the normal blue color wasn't there. I wonder if some of the smoke from the West Coast fires has reached as far as Texas? From the pictures you see, it seems like the prevailing winds are blowing most of the smoke out to sea. If some of the ash reaches a high enough altitude though, it could be carried eastward by the jet stream.
I've spent a lot of time in some of the areas where they are having wildfires in Oregon and Northern California. It's very sad to see these areas burn. The wildfires appear every year. I always keep wondering why they don't remove the underbrush and dead trees that provide kindling for these fires? Surely this would be less expensive than repairing the damage caused by the fires. There used to be a lot of logging in this part of the country but there weren't nearly as many fires. Could it be that the loggers weren't as bad as people thought? They certainly planted tons of new trees to replace the one they cut.
I'm glad I had an opportunity to see the country before everything started falling apart. The United States was such a beautiful place when I was growing up. I miss those days.
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