I cut the grass this afternoon, when I came inside at 3:45 my desktop weather channel softwary told me it was 94 degrees F. It has cooled down since then, it is now 91 degrees.... Today I cut all of the grass that I cut....I hire someone for the hard stuff.... He has about a between a quarter and half acre and I have the rest of our two acres - he gets the very steep hills, I get the steep hills and some flat stuff.............. I like doing it - I do not walk and push... I ride.. Today I did the up grass, the middle grass, the flat grass and the yard grass... I am going to write a novel some day called called "Journey to the Middle Grass." It will feature my most beloved of all creatures, the tick.

This morning after a scrumptious breakfast with my friends Dennis and Marie, I shoveled S_ _ _ . Actually, it was cow manure...250 lbs. of it.......... that was not enough, I had to buy and additional 400 lbs. I will be an expert at spreading manure when I am finished - Sandy says I already am and expert at shoting the S _ _ _.... this is an additional talent I have developed over the years.

At noon I helped Dennis install the second gate on the play ground equipment an the day care playground at church. He has a picture, that you can see at Dennis and Marie's blog. Then I came home and cut the grass...........

Yesterday I bought a birdbath for our main garden - here are pictures.........

I haven't put any water in it yet - I am hoping it will rain... However, at 94 degrees, it will just evaporate. I have seen a couple of butterflies checking it out, but the birds are ignoring it until there is water to take a bath... the birds and butterflies will also be in my middle grass novel along with the ticks. Did I say something about spreading S _ _ _?

Okay, Michael Cody's blog about his son, Raleigh, and life got me to thinking about my days in Detroit when I was just a little older than Raleigh.... I just checked Google and discovered that my grade school (that is what we used to call 1 through 8) is not listed.... My high school, Cody High School, still exists.... anyway, Michael made me think of one of my friends, Gerald Hochendoner. In the winter, Gerald and I would ride our bikes to the parks and rec pond that was frozen for ice skating....this was a very large field that was used for flying model airplanes in the summer - soccer wasn't popular then or it would have been used for that in the summer. In the winter, it was flooded and because is below 32 degrees F. in the winter, it froze... The water was no more than knee deep, so you probably would not drown if the ice broke and you fell in - I was cold, I know because that happened to me. Well, in the winter Gerald and I would ride our bikes to the pond and play hockey all day.. The pond was big enough that there was room for skating in circles and figure skating and ice hockey..

There were no boards, there were only approximate boundaries, most of us did not have all the equipment - I had catcher's shin guards instead of hockey shin guards.... we picked teams and played all day long...... We had a lot of imagination.... since I did not start skating until I was 10 instead of 2, I was not the best skater, but I liked to play defense and goalie... we had fun, and there were no adults to tell us how to do it....

In the summer, the ice was not there or we would have played hockey in the summer. However, we still hung out and had fun... we might have been playing some sort of ball on the gravel playground at the elementay school that is no longer in existence..... or we might have been at Geralds home playing chess........... That is the whole point of the story, one particular summer, we played chess every day and every day, expept one, Gerald won and John lost.... and what did I learn, I learned that being freinds and hanging out doing constructive things was the important thing, not wheather or not you win the game... It is about being yourself and liking that person enough to stick to being you instead of trying to be somebody else..

That lesson was not learned the summer I lost to Geradl Hochendoner every day playing chess, but it did teach me humility and to be a good sport!

By the way, I just Googled Gerald Hochendoner, and I might have found a referenc to him.... However, I think I will just stick with my memory....


Thanks for reading, take good care of yourself, cheers, john