It's another bright, hot, and muggy day, best spent indoors, although I do see the occasional stroller or biker passing by on the street as I write. They must like to sweat.

I've never liked to exert myself in the heat. When I was a kid, there was always tension in the house when my parents asked me to do yard work in the heat of the day. Without fail I'd do a half-assed job and quit because I hated working outside in the heat. They'd insist that I go back out and "finish the job," and I complied with all the sullenness a 12-year-old can muster, at least in going back out. But I don't think I ever did a landscaping chore up to my parents' standards--I just didn't care enough. The worst job of all was trimming the edges of the lawn--this was before the advent of electric string trimmers. All there was to use were those scissors-type clippers with the handles that you squeezed together. They were big and bulky and never really sharp enough to do a neat trim; they tore out more grass by the roots than cut it--at least in my careless hands.

Funny how the worm turns when you're responsible for something yourself. Steve, project-driven as he is, took it as a given that we'd have a showplace yard wherever we lived, and I enthusiastically agreed, literally never looking back. We both had models in our minds from our upbringings, it wasn't as if we were starting from scratch. My parents followed the progress of every garden and yard addition we made with avid, proud, and, I'd have to say, amazed interest, although they never really rubbed it in about my former reluctance to do the self-same work that I was so proud of now. The accretion of years of work on this place has resulted in the nicest looking house on our street, for sure, and has provided inspiration for our neighbors. We've accomplished much.

But I still hate working in the heat.