Story by Jon Stalnaker AKA The Studebaker Dude
It’s been a long hot summer. Breaking records for how many days were over 100 degrees have taken their toll on our beautiful landscape. We try to make it better each year and were doing quite well the last few years, but this year, we are not able to maintain our progress. Now we are hardly experts and have been on a learning curve since we moved to Oklahoma. We are learning which plants and shrubs are hearty enough to flourish in the Oklahoma weather, but this is certainly not a typical season this year. Many of the plants that gave us beautiful flowers last year are not doing the same this year. I suppose this is just a learning curve tangent that we have to accept this time. Sort of a “better luck next year” scenario. Oh well…
Keeping on top of my lawn is another difficult situation. We don’t have a sprinkler system so it’s up to us to water the lawn. Who wants to spend that much time outside in the blistering heat? Not me, and my lawn shows it. It’s not just the watering but the mowing too. My mowing schedule is usually a three day process that works with my equipment and my declining energetic capabilities. I like mowing the lawn but not when it’s 110 degrees with the heat factor added in. So, I have not been staying on top of that chore either.
I like to say that the best part of being retired is that I don’t HAVE to go outside during storms or extreme temperatures, high or low. And that is true. You can see that I live up to this saying by the condition of my lawn. As much as we want to stay near the A/C vent inside the house on miserable days, we can only refuse to go outside for so long before it gets way too embarrassing to let it go. I’m just thankful that we don’t live in a neighborhood with an “HOA Karen” breathing down our necks. I appreciate it when my neighbors let their lawns get a bit raggedy too. That takes away self-inflicted shame that can overwhelm me from time to time.
These setbacks can be helpful as we talk about things like having a sprinkler system installed. I have to remember that growing younger is not something I have mastered, nor do I expect to EVER master it. It’s the price we have to pay for retirement. Not everything about being retired is wonderful, as I pointed out recently with my story about keeping up with computer software updates. There’s a reason old people get cranky. Of course, there are those that were always cranky, but even they get crankier. However, getting older is better than the alternative.
It’s hard to keep up with an ever changing world that seems to be leaving us behind with it’s new technology. But add on top of that, the memories we have of simpler times when we knew we could find things in encyclopedias or at the library. It might take us more than a couple of seconds to research an answer, but we knew we could count on it not to be fake. Now a days there is so much fake information on the internet that you don’t know what is true and what is not. And don’t get me started with Artificial Intelligence, now that is some really scary stuff. All this talk about AI making humans obsolete is nothing new other than it USED to be called Science Fiction. Now, even the people that are developing this technology believe it could happen.
I need to stop looking at my phone and the TV news. Can’t we just go back to the days when we sang “All you need is Love”. It’s a wonderful thing consider the difference of being in my Twenties in the Seventies and being in my Seventies in the Twenties. I understand the difference because I lived it. When God takes me home, I will no longer have to deal with this craziness. That gives me comfort. I have no suggestions for how to fix this mess…
