In the Heat of August

 There is a lot going on in our corner of the world this month. I could tell you about my MIL's birthday party at a cafe...

Or about all the food we processed for the coming year...

And how much I love "flowerbed gardening"/ how well our tiny garden is producing...  

Or how my flowers are not doing quite as well this summer (any ideas why my big, beautiful hydrangea bushes have 0 flowers??) but I'm 😍over my Danika hardy hibiscus that is blooming it's lil heart out this month...

I could wax poetic about how much we like our new refrigerator since we [finally] replaced the 30 yr old appliance we bought when we got married...

Or talk about how much I enjoyed being in the fire department's parade with my son in his boss's awesome truck... 

Or a wedding I almost invited myself to so I could see my other son as a groomsman...

I could totally spam you with zoo photos with my adorable grandkids...

I mean, who doesn't love a carousel ride [or two] at the zoo?

I could wax eloquent about how much I fear bike accidents and having a son who rides is against my better judgement, but I have to admit this shot of Jeremy in TN on a bachelor party trip is pretty cool. 

I could tell you about birthday season starting at our house. And how I feel about having a son who is 29. TWENTY NINE! How did that happen?! I was 29 myself just the other day...

But a couple of my friends are going through a rough patch due to an accident and a fire last week; they are on my mind a lot. Humor helps when we're going through difficulties, so I thought maybe I would share a "funny" story from this month in their honor. (Hopefully it's funny to you because it falls in the embarrassing category for me.) 

So we were at our son's house helping with some landscaping. I was digging up some overgrown lilies and dividing them. 

I had a particularly large clump to divide. I placed the shovel in the center and jumped on it, expecting the blade to slice cleanly through the clump. Apparently I underestimated how tough those jumbled rhizomes were. Instead of slicing cleanly through, the shovel blade ricocheted off. Before I knew what had happened, I was flat on my back on the gravel. The first stunned thought that went zipping through my mind was "I hope no one saw this!" Followed closely behind by "This is going to hurt" as I lay there looking up at the front bumper of the pickup (visible in the background of the above photo). Very fortuitous I didn't clobber my head on the bumper on the way down!  Go ahead and laugh. I don't doubt it looked hilarious. If anyone saw it happen, they have been too polite to mention it.   

The ironic thing is I was having trouble with my lower back prior to this little mishap. It would seem slamming to the ground popped whatever was out of place back into place because my lower back no longer bothers me, apart from the bruises of course. I'm not recommending shovel-jumping as a method of chiropractic treatment, but I'll take it as a perk of my mishap. SMH