Bring Out Your Dead!

Death be not proud.

Yup, poet John Donne has a good point there.

To those of us who see or talk about "Death," the word "pride" seldom comes into the picture or the conversation.

This morning, I'd like to take some poetic license and add  a thought to Donne's sonnet. 

Death be not pretty either. 

'Specially when the grim reaper strikes all at once.

When I look around my yard, I see very little "pretty." 

We've got an abundance of ugly, bland, withered-up death here around the Lovestead. 

Happily, I'm not talking animals or peeps.

During my Saturday outdoor projects, I found that dying was more predominant than originally thought. 

Plus, 'twas maddening. 

I was not happy to find that the frosts and ultra cold truly were killers, snuffing out the life and beauty from pretty much every flower here on the entire Lovestead. 

Though frustrating, I guess it's okay for the total floral blitz because, in past years, the few live flowers that have survived among deadheads have appeared hopeful but hardly eye candy.

So, yesterday with my cart and my trusty pruning tools, I began the process of moving from location to location pretty much like the characters in the Monty Python classic, picking up and carting off the dead. 

Bring out your dead Virginia creepers!

Bring out your dead, slimy nastYurtiums!

Bring out your dead cosmos and daisies and bachelor buttons!

This project started at the barn where the wandering Virginia creeper wanders no more. 

Death for the creeper had to be defeating and demorTalizing, for sure, as those leafy stems had aggressively kept on the move pretty much every day during the late summer.

In one fell swoop, the creeping ceased from end to end, suggesting just how powerful the killer cold was. 

I also removed wildflowers from the back side of the barn and daisies from the pots at the shop doors.  

Later, I decided to take a break and do something positive.

I would carry the ladder to the north lawn and start picking the beautiful shiny red apples from my big tree before the deer started their two-legged acrobatics to steal fruit from the next level up from where they've already removed every apple. 

With the ladder situated in place, I went to the house and brought back buckets, eager to start filling them. 

Well, that enthusiasm was short-lived.  

The majority of my apples have FROZEN, and it's not even mid-October!

At first, I thought that rubbery, soft feel as I plucked a few apples from the limbs might be limited to apples most exposed. 

Silly me! 

For a short time, I picked, throwing three out of every four apples to the ground. 

Remember that quirky saying, "The deer are watching you."  

Let's add, "and they are laughing at you!"  

It didn't take long for me to get disgusted, thinking about all the treats for the horses over the winter and the applesauce I had intended to make from the best crop of apples ever on that tree----at least in our 13 years here.

So, I took my buckets (one with some apples in it) and headed back to the house. 

Would you believe the deer population in our yard yesterday increased significantly after I left the area where so many apples had been dropped to the ground, making their job much easier. 

Foster had a busy day chasing several groups of gluttonous bambi's out of the north lawn. 

They had, indeed, been watching and probably laughing and they had been primed for Marianne to discover those "bad apples." 

This morning my bucket of apples----only those which were still hard----shows significant moisture, so they could be going bad also. 

Okay, so we've got dead flowers and dead lettuce and dead apples.  

What else could be dead?

Let's talk lawnmower batteries and battery chargers! 

Knowing I did not want to limit my day's activities to carting off dead flowers and seeing the deep carpet of dead leaves in the yard, leaf pick up was a priority. 

So, after the dead apple discovery, I decided to start up the lawnmower. 

When it would not start, I went back to picking dead flowers, thinking that when the day warmed up, the lawnmower would fire up. 

Two tries later---one after I'd thrown a blanket over the engine---the mower became even more resistant toward firing up. 

Battery charger time, I decided.  

Bill had left the battery charger down the lane at the shed when he charged up the old 6-volt Ford tractor a few weeks ago. 

So, I brought it back to the shop, hooked it up to the battery and went off to do other errands while the battery charged. 

When I came back, the charger was not working, the lights on the lawnmower ignition were not working and the power from the shop was not working. 

Must have tripped a breaker, I thought, so I took care of that problem, came back to the mower and still no juice.  

Long story short, both the lawnmower and the charger still show no signs of life. 

I don't intend to cart them off like the dead flowers or throw them to the deer.  I'm hoping and praying, as is Bill, that a new charger, dialed to 12 volts instead of 6 volts, will revive my mower. 

Please, God, I'm thinking cuz that's the mower with the leaf pickup bags.  

To alleviate my disappointment throughout yesterday's interactions with dead things, I was able to start the Sears mower and do a whole lot of mulching. 

Today, there's still plenty of dead stuff to pull out of the dirt, load up in the cart and haul off to its final resting place. 

Still, there is more disappointment, which I'm sure others are observing:  our fall colors look pretty bleak and dull too. 

It seems that Mother Nature decided we needed a reminder that no matter how "proud" we get, she's always in charge. 

She calls the shots, and we live or die by them. 

Happy Sunday.