Relative Something

In September, the shortening of days becomes more noticeable. The temperature swings between morning and afternoon force clothing adjustments from jackets to shirt sleeves. Tree leaves begin to reveal that their growing season is coming to an end.

The tops of some of our trees are starting to show some orange. Cyndie has set our thermostat to “Auto” to cool the house if the daytime gets too warm and bring heat when the nights get too chilly. Schools are in session, and fall sports are underway.

Advertisers peddling goods via Christmas themes won’t be far behind.

I experimented with relaxing my perfectionistic tendencies yesterday in order to get enough mowing done to feel like our place is ready for us to be gone for a week. The grass remained damp enough that it was difficult to get a grip with the riding mower’s tires.

It didn’t feel like I had time to carefully navigate sideways slopes, so there was a fair amount of failure to keep the free-spinning front wheels of the zero-turn from uncontrolled turns downhill. It was a haphazard, frequently circular route to getting all the grass blades trimmed.

The wet soil and slippery grass resulted in a far greater occurrence of spinning wheels when I simply wanted to execute a turn. Normally, this causes me a lot of angst and a fair amount of foul language, and inspires me to try many ways to prevent it from happening. Not yesterday, though.

I chose the alternative of not caring in an effort to accomplish the greater goal of having the whole place mowed before we leave. I’m the only one who will even notice the increased number of skid marks.

It’s September. People’s attention will be on the trees, not on the dirt marks in our grass.

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