Dark Clouds=Silver Linings

My yard is not what most people strive for. While my neighborhood is old enough to have yards large enough for the kids to play, it is also old enough to have an abundance of weeds in just about every yard.

While that doesn't bother me too much, I do dream of a well manicured lawn of fescue, free from the ravages of clover, dandelions, and numerous other broad leafs and this spring I raked out several bare spots, reseeded and thought I was on my way. I treated the yard with a broad leaf killer and it did its' job. But then other things took priority and the yard returned to its' native state.

Flash back with me for a moment to my childhood. I lived in this same neighborhood, ran the streets and the yards with my friends and in those days the clover patches led to many honey bee stings on bare feet. Fast forward to early spring 2007 and the local news was reporting a steep decline in the number of honey bee hives. This was a nation wide problem, and the impact on honey producers and agriculture (remember from biology class, plants need bees to help in pollination) could be calamitous. For the past several years I had wondered what had happened to all those honey bees which plagued us in my childhood, and my own observations seemed to confirm the news story.

As the clover reestablished in my front yard I began to see an occasional bee, even pausing once on the lawn tractor before trapping one beneath its' mower deck. The other day I counted four bees in the patch just outside my front door. I still want that perfect lawn, but I'm not sure it's worth it. The clover isn't the best looking ground cover, but the tomatoes in the back yard are twice the size of any we've ever had. Maybe they aren't related, but don't tell me that, I'm happy believing that I'm feeding them and they're feeding me.

If you're looking for my running stats, they'll be absent for the next week. I finally got around to seeing my doctor about my injury. Thankfully, no sports hernia, but the tissue that would be torn in a hernia is inflamed. So I'm following doctor's orders, cutting back on my physical activity and taking anti-inflammatories. Like my clover and bees story above, the restrictions have not been a bad thing. They have meant more energy when I come home from work, and therefore more time spent playing with the kids, something that we both needed. Every cloud can have a silver lining, it is just a matter of looking for it.