After a great start this spring, it’s again turned to the dark (wet and muddy) side. The fields around our farmstead are full of water holes that only the ducks and dogs seem to be enjoying. Whenever I drive by, there are several colorful male mallards swimming on the ponds. I suspect that the females are sitting on egg in the ditch or tending to little ones. Hopefully, the ducklings won’t make an appearance on a day when our yellow Labs have decided it’s time for a swim.
Maggie and Minnie head for a pond whenever we turn our backs on them and come back to the house mud-covered, stinky and slimy. Rosebud, my daughter Ellen’s golden retriever, gets muddy and dirty even though she doesn’t go for a swim. All she has to do is roll around in the wet grass and then run through the flowerbed. She smells better than her canine companions, but that’s small consolation.
It’s a constant, mostly losing battle, to keep the mud out of our house. I can’t blame ait all on the dogs, either. When any of the human members of our family, including me, go outside we collect mud. We take our shoes off in hopes that we can confine it to the porch, but because our socks and feet usually get dirty, too, it follows us in.
Of course, we have little to complain about compared to farmers who are still trying to get crops in and spray the ones that are up to protect them from funguses and eliminate weed competition.
Since there’s nothing we can do about the weather we’ll just have to live with it. At least when it’s wet we have an excuse not to weed the garden which would entail fighting off the mosquitoes. But the mosquitoes are a whole ‘nother story, so I’ll save that one for another day.
