Sunday, July 13, 2008

A Great Summer, So Far

Here in the City of Chicago, the Summer of 2008 has been a lovely one, so far. Plenty of rain, with warm sunny days and cool nights. A thunderstorm or two, but nothing serious. A few days of heat with high stupidity -- I mean humidity -- but only a handful of them, and only one at a time. Nothing like the endless stretch of 95+ degree days we had here about 10 years ago, killer heat that caused the deaths of many homeless and elderly. The morgue was overflowing, so the bodies were held in refrigerated trucks in hospital parking lots. The nightly news was gruesome. But I digress........

I am a grump when the weather does not cooperate -- when Mother Nature sticks her tongue out at me and all the rain storms pass right over my house, usually heading south. And then I have to go to work and listen to my co-workers from Indiana brag about lovely, soaking rains. Bah!

Last August, during the rather evil Summer of 2007, an horrific storm blew down my ancient stockade fence (I'm reading lots of Jane Austen lately, so I wrote "an horrific storm" instead of "a horrific storm". So cultured!) The day my fence blew down, August 23, 2007, was the 23rd anniversary of my mom's death. She died on a Thursday, and it was also a Thursday that my stockade fence blew down, along with the huge grapevine that had draped it for many years. I was secretly glad to lose the grapevine because for all its beauty, it was a maintenance nightmare. Here's a picture of a portion of the old stockade fence, all dressed up in its grapevine:



After the fence blew down and the grapevine was history, a new, maintenance-free white privacy fence was installed. I was then left with what seemed to be miles of pristine, white fence. A very white fence. White, White, White. Here's a picture, along with my new Viburnum Onondaga. Pray that the Viburnum, and the other shrubs I have planted, grow quickly -- before I succumb to snowblindness: