Love's Labor Day's Lost

Sometimes it's hard to know where one season ends and the other begins.  Kind of like trying to figure out where the watermelon plant starts and the tomato plant begins; or where the tomato plant starts and the pear tree begins.  That's what happens when these things are planted too close together.  They all get fuzzed up together, wrapping their branches in amongst each other, causing no end of confusion and consternation.  Our only hope is that one of 'em will actually come to something and not die off when the winter snows come rumbling in.

This Labor Day is getting all fuzzed up in my head with Memorial Day.  Didn't summer just start a few days ago?  And here I am with so much to do, so little time left to do it in, and the world just moving right along as if there isn't a thing in the world that can slow it down.  The kids will soon be back in school, the three-day weekend will be over, and there'll be nothing to show for it - at least, not on my part.  It doesn't feel as though anything has been accomplished, other than bits and pieces here and there.  Mostly spending money on things that needed attention at the moment, but now they're all forgotten and unimportant.  Dealt With.  Completed.  For the moment.

I was hoping to get the green Subaru fixed up, and instead, we've gone and put the red Subaru into the shop, since it's closer to being up and running.  The red one only had a water pump gasket leak that was keeping it from being streetworthy.  On accounta I don't like dripping radiator fluid all over the place whenever the car stops, which is what it was doing.   (Sure, there's other things amiss with it, like the transmission, but they're good enough to keep it on the road for now.)  The green one, though, had bad head gaskets, which require a whole lot more time and effort.

In fact, it's been nearly four months working on that green Subaru's engine, and it's still laying in pieces in my garage, waiting for a trip to the machine shop to get the heads cleaned and remove the remnants of a broken head bolt from the engine core.  Kinda getting frustrated with it, but that's the way it goes with these projects.  There's always the risk that something is gonna block it up and hold ya back before it gets done.  Or the money you'd saved up for the job gets spent for something more timely and needful.

It'd help if there was a good mechanic herabouts, but I still haven't found a mechanic I can trust.  Leastways with my brother-in-law, I knew the job was always done right.  I've gone to several mechanics around here, and each one has done something that just didn't sit right with me. So I'm inclined to do the job myself, wherever I can.

Only thing is, I can't be working on two cars at once.  There's gotta be at least one other car that works around here, with the activities and schedules we keep around here.  And it would be best if some official-like professional mechanic did the work, so I would have a warranty to fall back on, just in case.

I don't give no warranties on any car work.

But now the car's in the shop, and there's more money we have to spend (that we really don't have) on a hunk of metal and plastic that's only going to fall apart more and more as the years go by.  Kind of like a lot of things around here.  You can pour all the money in the world into your car or your house, but they're just going to follow the laws of entropy and disintegrate around your head.  Better to spend the money on things that last.

If only cars were like plants.  Just add water and sunlight and good soil, and, instead of rusting, they get bigger and brighter and better day by day.  Like the tomatoes.  One day they're blossoms, the next day they're green blobs, and then all of a sudden you're looking at a whole mess o' tomatoes, beautiful and red and made for salad.

And while there is labor involved in taking care of the plants, there isn't near the expense.  And it's kind of restful to go out into the yard and just look at them, marveling at the fact that they weren't even there just a short time ago.

Some of the plants go through these marvelous transitions, appearing as little nubs of nothingness at first, then becoming little sprouts of somethingness, and then taking on a familiar form that suddenly clicks in your brain and a thought bubble appears over your head and says, Wow! That's going to be a strawberry! or Cool! That's a broccoli!

And then there's other plants that just sit there doing nothing at all, like those watermelons; and you have to resign yourselves to the fact that those ol' watermelon plants are not going to do anything before it's gonna be too late in the season; and then the fall temperatures are going to kick in, and the greenery is going to fade away as it gets ready for the eventual, inevitable snowfall.

And I still haven't figure out what we're gonna do with all these plants that are still growing when the winter comes along.  We were able to keep the tomatoes and the broccoli in the house over the winter months, but the beds have gotten quite large now and there won't be nearly enough room for them all.

Hmph.  Gonna hafta think about this a spell.