Two months ago, I stood at my windows and watched the yard folk seed the mud pit that was the yard surrounding my house.  We had a great time, the sprouts and I, watching the shooting machine chew up and spit out bales of hay in a fine cloud of histamine-inducing grandeur that would hang like a haze three feet above the ground for days to come.  We watched excitedly as the tender shoots of fescue and Kentucky bluegrass poked their little heads above the dirt and protective hay blanket covering the yard.  We watched in joy as the predominantly-yellow color of the yard turned to the green as the grass began to outstrip the hay.  Then we watched in the past two weeks as the green baked out to yellow again in ninety-degree, 10% humidity days of blazing sun.  Ahh, it was a good run, if short.  The crunch-crunch of dead grass under our feet at least was better than the sploot-sploot of mud and dirt clinging to our shoes and through the house with the nice new, pale carpets all over.

But then this week, the summer thunderstorms have begun.  The place heats up, the clouds, haze, and pollution ceiling drops, and the humidity gradually approaches that of a shower cubicle, and it becomes necessary to evolve gills (I’m working on that) in order to get a good breath outside.  Just when the sudafed is about to become a table condiment, right next to the salt, pepper, and ketchup, the clouds get that swollen, scowly feel and the air gets even more still than before, just before the warm, wet wind slaps you like a pair of wet boxer shorts and the thunder rumbles.

The sky opens up and great, huge drops of condensed pollution splat and sizzle on the asphalt.  They bounce off the petrified dirt between the blades of dead grass, sizzling as they touch the dried hay and ooze their way onto the cracked earth.  They hit too fast to soak in, instead bouncing off and flowing into the low parts of the lawn (perhaps still graced with a few green blades courtesy of poor drainage.  The sky dumps a load of water on the ground for about fifteen minutes and the temperature drops ten degrees.  Then balance is restored, and the rain stops, moving on to the east.  The steam begins to rise from the hot asphalt and the undersea-adventure feel of the outside air is right back to that bathtub feel, except there’s a few more puddles, sucked up greedily by the roots of the grasses and weeds.

But mostly, by the weeds.  The grass fights and struggles and gives up the ghost at a hot look.  The weeds, though.  They flourish. They green.  They carpet the ground like lush velvet and creep into my garden and my flower beds.  I have to hand-tend my snapdragons.  I have to talk to the damn things to get them to poke their shy heads up from the ground, and reassure them that yes, they’re Mommy’s tough little guys.  Meanwhile, the wild carrot’s hogging all the playground equipment, stealing my rosebush’s lunch and kicking topsoil in the face of my salvia.  And the morning glory–which died where I wanted it, yet sprang up with vigor all the places I didn’t want–keeps skulking around the edges of the beds, trying to look innocent but obviously up to no good.  Just waiting for the minute I look away, and bullying the little guys to keep quiet with dirty looks and vague threats of being ganged up on later on.

I know we’re not in the right zone for it, but man–it’s a jungle out there.  And by “out there” I mean my front doorstep.

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