Too Damn Hot

The 16 house guests hit the road and I settled into for a good day's work. I was gathering up the towels, upstairs and down, kitchen and bath, to start the laundry to run while I planted those shrub and trees, when the phone rang. My friend was on her way through and wanted to stop. We spent a while sitting on the deck, rocking in our chairs and talking about friends and family and events of the day. And complaining a bit how it is hot, too hot to do anything but sit, and it was nice. Made me remember taking 'lunch' to the fields on a hot July afternoon back when the farm still had some hay fields that had not yet yielded to the plow and it seemed to me there was nothing to do hotter than haying and no place on earth hotter than that hayfield. We went back home to the luxury sitting with our books in front of the humming droning fans, while the men went back to the hottest job in the hottest place. And now after an unusually cool and long spring, 'seasonable' weather is finally hot upon us and we have a new thing to gripe about, how it makes us sweat and makes the work seem twice as hard. Or, we could just sit on the deck and drink iced lemonade and plant when it cools in the evening.