Ran originally in The Times and The News-Star Sunday, August 11, 2019 editions.

There you are in the middle of mowing grass, sweating like a hog with typhoid, when a thought crosses your mind so evil it makes you shudder:

“I’ll have to do this same thing next week. And the week after that. And the week…”

Such is the human condition.

I actually enjoy mowing, in an it-makes-me-think-I’m-a-farmer sort of way. Sometimes I pretend I’m baling hay or back in them ol’ tobacco fields of home, and the crew is off drinking RCs under a shade tree and will be back to help any second.

Plus there’s an immediate satisfaction to mowing. Makes you feel you’ve accomplished something, right then, without even having to think.

And nobody can get to you when you’re mowing. Sometimes they’ll wave you down — hate mowus interruptus, as the sweaty Italians say—but generally, no one wants to have a conversation with a guy who’s sweating like he stole something.

This time of year, it’s just a survival-of-the-fittest type deal. August is the month of the beat down, when the sun is undefeated. Everybody’s yard looks like it just went 12 rounds with Tyson. By the middle of any afternoon, so do most people.

This August is tame compared to recent ones. For the most part, I’ve had to water plants only once a day. Usually I just stand over them and let the sweat drip.

Still, it’s how summer is supposed to be. This is our first summer in the house we’re living in and I wasn’t sure how all this “stuff” was going to “do.” It’s learning mode all the time in the gardening game.

The vitex are reblooming with lilac cones and the sun-loving lantana is not exactly hardy in blooms but it shows no signs of giving up. Neither do the sweet potato vines, a plant that makes you feel like a real gardener because you just plant a little sprig and keep the water on it and it goes everywhere, the FedEx of plants.

The Mexican heather, some purple and the more rare white, are still blooming in the back yard and propagating like there’s no tomorrow, and they don’t care who knows it. The scientific name of the plant is cuphea hyssopifolia, which means “these plants are basically rabbits with leaves.”

I’ve got the Columbia blue plumbago planted with some sweet potato vine in the giant plastic football that was my toy box back in the formative years, before I knew the price or an azalea or a Japanese maple. It’s in the semi-shade and is a favorite. Some of the elephant ears are drooping but most are at attention. The ferns are tucked in shade and don’t even realize it’s hot. The hosta, one of my baby sister’s faves, is always sleeping with one pretty eye open in the shade.

The Wandering Jew has been practically taking care of itself, will disappear in a couple of months and show back up in the spring. I thought the canna needed sun but they’re rowed up head-high in the shade along the back fence like a tall line of leavy green soldiers.

It’s plenty hot but soon it’ll be cold and people will be talking about how they’re “freezing to death.” So like the Wandering Jew and the lantana and the sweat potato vines that will all call in sick once the first freeze hits, I’m going to enjoy these last days of summer.

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