High Summer

I don't know if mass layoffs have struck BPhD or everyone's gone walkabout cause its high summer.

Probably the latter. I woulda heard about the former. Last hired, first fired. You know how they do.

Well, if they want to lay me off, they going to have to take it up with the Local. I got a contract. I got recall rights. And I get severance pay.

Its High Summer on the Flowage and a more fecund summer you will not find. Everything is ripening and reddening and gestating. The very air seems fertile as if vines could sprout from the clouds and the fog could bring forth honeyed fruit.
The crops look stupendous. Thick stands of rye and oats are marshalled across the county. Even a slight breeze casts them into motion, the grain rocking in slow rollers from fenceline to treeline.
Fields planted in corn and beans crowd the horizon. Field corn is already seven feet tall and the beans; Great Northern, Pinto, wax, and soy, are keeling over from the weight of their beany bounty.
Two crops of alfalfa have been put up already and the third crop is mowed, raked, and drying on the hillside. If the rain holds off for a few more days, it will be in the barn by the end of the week. There's plenty of time for a fourth crop. Nothing makes a country boy content like an overstuffed haymow.

The critters are thriving, too. I can't tell you how many sets of twin fawn Whitetail I've seen this season. I even saw triplets the day before yesterday browsing with their mama on an island in the Flowage. Its not unusual for two or three fawns to be born at one time but its unheard of they should survive this long into the summer. Tells you how rich is the browsing this year.

There's a merganser in the backyard on her third crop of offspring. She burrowed into the shoreline in the spring and has been here ever since raising babies and eluding Fox. She's had a couple close calls but Fox keeps falling for the broken wing ruse. He must see through it by now. I suspect he's so well fed he harasses the merganser strictly for amusement.

The boys are thriving like little idjits. I don't know if I told you but there's three boys spending the summer here. They range in age from eight to eight. It took me two weeks to learn how to tell them apart.

How they all ended up here is another post but suffice to say, one is the son of my stepdaughter, one is the cousin of the son of my stepdaughter, and one is the son of my niece, Moya. We call him Poco. You've heard me talk about him before.

Anyway, they're all here and carrying on like so many cocker spaniels. I admit to a moment of panic at the beginning of summer when they all parachuted in. I even tried giving them away to my blogging sisters. No joy there. They all had thin excuses.

Now, though, its working out pretty well. They go to a day camp four days a week and spend the other three days roaming the Flowage on their own.

I've got an old aluminum canoe they've commandeered to sail about in. Venturing out onto the broad waters on their own is forbidden but there are lots of sloughs and channels and shallow bays for them to reconnoiter. From time to time, they've even brought home nice fat perch for our supper.

I'm thriving, too. Its been six months since my surgery and I had my 5000 mile checkup last month. Three days of intensive poking and prodding and prying and sticking me with needles and examining my various fluid outputs have resulted in my being declared a cancer-free zone. I'm clean. I'm not sober but I'm clean for the first time in a year. My strength is just about back to form and my stamina is right where it should be.

I still have a little problem on my left side. After the operation, my remaining parts were reassembled into something of a loose confederation. Due to some mashed nerve bundles, my left or southern flank did not immediately join in the new regime with enthusiasm. The next six months were taken up with restoring central control over all constituencies of the taddyporter body politic.

Restoration is nearly complete but it turns out laying on my left side for the nine hours of the procedure tore the rotator cuff in my left shoulder. Surgery is the only way to fix it but, you know, its enough already with the surgery.

I'm just going to put it off for awhile. The shoulder can't get any worse. Who knows? It might get better on its own.

It could happen. Its High Summer.