It happens every year. EVERY doggone year. You think we would be wise to it by now. But we’re not, and don’t realize the error of our ways until the cool spring air starts to fizzle and the inferno that is Florida begins its scorching march across the land.
Summer is coming. The heat is back. The air blisters and bubbles and grows heavy. The chilly nights and that blooming jasmine are just about a thing of the past as the world starts belching out 90-degree days. The mosquitoes have returned from wherever they winter, and we can bake bread in our cars again. Yippee!
Which wouldn’t be so bad — Come on, it’s Florida! We know it’s gonna’ get hot! — if not for shuffling through papers and finding the list. You know … the LIST.
Do you have one? Look around. If it’s like mine it will read: “Things to do before it gets hot.”
Oh codfish!
It’s the winter to-do list. The beat-the-heat list. The if-you-wait-until-summer-you-have-cantaloupe-for-brains list.
Worst of all, there isn’t a thing on it scratched off. Nada.
Not the stack of bricks that need the mortar chipped off. Or the trees that need trimming. Not the fence or the plans for the side of the house. Not the ongoing eradication of the cat-claw vines, which are just a shade above bearable when the weather is good and not unlike having a tiger eat your spleen with it’s hot.
Not the painting of the porch, and certainly not the tree stump removal. It’s the size of a school bus jutting straight out of the ground, and I swear it’s growing.
All winter I stared at it, once in a while poking it with a stick. I plotted its demise — digging around its roots, breaking up its trunk — but always managed to put it off.
“There’s plenty of time,” I would tell myself. And there was … the first 200 times I said it.
Doom, oh, doom!
Sure, we haven’t reached the kind of temperatures when articles of clothing spontaneously combust. When all the water in your body evaporates and you shed salt like a salt shaker. That’s coming, and I have a little time.
But not much. I spent last weekend battling the vines. Their little bulbs burrow deeper and deeper beneath the oak tree roots in a desperate attempt to escape my digging. They know if they can just hold out until May — just a couple more weeks! — they’ll have me licked this season.
Drenched in sweat and hooked up to my special hot weather IV bags, I kicked myself for waiting so long. For rationalizing all those delays. For all the made up mumbo-jumbo I came up with. It would be a long spring. A cool summer. El Nino is firing up, and when it catches the Polar Express and meets the jet stream, I’ll have until mid-June.
What?!? Where did that come from? It’s the ramblings of a mad man. A procrastinator. A fool!
Why didn’t I just do it when I had the chance? When it was cool?!?
In the winter it’s tough, back-breaking work. But in 90-degree heat, men will die … and those men are me.
I learned that last weekend. I cursed myself as the sweat drenched my clothes and the mosquitoes set up oil derricks to drain my blood. My head throbbed that night, and I couldn’t drink enough water. Ah, heatstroke. How I missed your wicked ways.
So the next day I scanned the yard and made a list of winter projects. I can deal with those in November when things cool down. I’m sure I’ll be motivated by then.