Relative Something

The day started reasonably enough yesterday. The ground is still pretty saturated, but I decided to give it half a day before trying to mow some of the areas that are most in need. Despite my decision to mow our grassy areas in April and May (as in not doing No-Mow-May), we aren’t entirely shortchanging the pollinating insects of wild blossoms.

The dandelions are all over our pastures and the horses are absolutely thriving on the access we’ve finally given them to graze to their hearts’ desire.

After lunch, I hopped on the zero-turn mower and tried tackling a few tricky spots. I give my performance a C-minus, but a significant portion of that low grade comes from the ground still being almost un-mow-ably wet. It doesn’t help that I’ve yet to master driving without excessively spinning a rear wheel as I try to maneuver.

An embarrassing number of muddy skids are present in almost all of the areas I tried to mow. Luckily, the grass will recover, the ground will eventually get dryer, and I will get better at driving with practice. The getting dryer part will probably take longer than the other two.

Last night as we were eating dinner and watching the PBS Newshour, the weather alert tones interrupted the show with a tornado warning for our county and a community just east of us. That was an unexpected surprise. The sky didn’t look the least bit threatening out our windows at the time. I immediately brought up a view of the weather radar on my laptop. Sure enough, there was one little spot of intense-looking weather happening very close, off to our east.

As time passed, that one spot slid south and morphed in a way that started to wrap around us. At that point, the skies did turn more ominously dark and big raindrops started to fall. I kept refreshing the radar view and saw new cells popping up all around us.

The best part of the whole night of stormy weather was the fact that Asher never paid any attention to what was going on outside. Our previous dog, Delilah would have started barking at the invisible monster before Cyndie or I heard the first rumble of thunder and she would have kept it up despite every trick we tried to calm her. The fact that Asher is not similarly bothered by thunder and lightning is bringing us immeasurable appreciation and satisfaction.

Almost makes me not care that he can’t be trusted to stay off our bed and the kitchen counters yet.

He does bark when someone shows up at the door but not at thunderstorms.

Perfect. Good dog, Asher.

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