That'll Be The Day

Thing 1 (or maybe 2) was not content with the opening he'd made in the scratch barrel and yesterday attacked the bag of feed before I could put it away.  There are times I feel I'm under siege.

A cloud cover came over yesterday that kept temps down in the high 90s, but worse, created humidity that was next to unbearable.  My mother was born in 1904 and grew up in a house on the Illinois River.  She told of how, in summer, the family would pull mattresses out onto the "sleeping porch" at night.  They also had an outdoor kitchen for cooking in the summer because of the terrible humidity.  She came from an unusual family for that era.  It was normal then for males to have and inherit land and money, but in Mother's family it was the women who controlled all that.  My grandmother owned one house, bordered on either side by homes owned by her mother and her sister, Mother's grandmother and aunt.  Family farms in Illinois and Wisconsin were owned by women relatives.  Later and married to my father, it was my mother who bought four adjoining lots in California.

Back to the present.  It was another day spent in front of the television.  I found a couple of segments of Madam Secretary I'd saved.  I was such a fan of The West Wing and Madam Secretary comes close.  After that I went western and watched Jeremiah Johnson, Little Big Man, and finished up with John Wayne in The Searchers.  Anyone who ever saw it will recognize the tag line, "That'll be the day!"

In an effort too keep what green plants I have alive, I moved the sprinkler here and there throughout the day.  A side benefit is watching birds of all sizes play in the spray.  Even turkeys rested in overspray from the rose pen.  As Cole Porter's song says, "It's too darn hot!"

Wisps of clouds covered the face of the rising moon.