Guilt

I'm not sure how this happened, but what started out as a compliment, suddenly has become a flurry of guilt-induced activity. The odd thing about it is, the guilt is flying back and forth over 4700 miles and 8 time zones.

Hedgewizard keeps an impressive list of all that is coming from his garden and pantry on his humorous blog. He held a "Delurking Day", so I delurked and dared to say that I hoped to have as productive a garden as his. Somehow that made him feel guilty, and sent him into a frenzy of activity, which he claims is my fault. Guess I should've stayed a lurker?

Of course I feel guilty about setting all this about, even though I didn't mean to. I've been known to put my foot in my mouth before. Being the guilt-driven person I am, I have since cleared the strawberry bed of weeds and runners, replanting where needed, watered all the veggie beds, totally cleaned the kitchen, which looked like a bomb had gone off in it, done three loads of laundry and hung them on the clothesline to dry, restocked the wood shed, and restacked the leftover wood, since the pile had fallen over, and am about to attack the herb garden. And did I mention that it's 86 degrees outside?

I know, us Northwesterners are weather wimps. I can handle cold temps and rain, but heat I cannot bear. Very few of us around here have air conditioning, since there are so few days that we need it. But I suffer when it gets towards 90.

I'm actually enjoying this little bit of summer, since it won't last long. I saw geese flying South today; more signs of fall. I'm anxiously awaiting the Oregon Climate Service's winter weather predictions. Some people think that we're going to have a mild winter after a crummy summer, others think that we're in for another bad one like last winter (floods, windstorm, and snow).

Until then, it's work outside during the sunny days. Even if it's 86 degrees, and guilt-ridden.