As you fine folks sit and look out your windows the scenes are so different.  Those of us living up here in the mountains see that all too familiar white stuff hanging onto the trees and covering the ground. Its almost as though someone popped one of those fresh dough containers and it exploded. I am sorry to say this is normal for April.  The unfortunate thing is we just used up almost a full week of our summer sun. I sincerely feel we get a limited amount of summer days up here in the sticks. We will indeed pay for it around August. We just might get a snow storm around that time of year. In jest, I predicted the weather when I worked for engineering.  The three engineers just laughed and joked at my prediction. So, I wrote it on the blackboard we worked with.  I put the date and predicted we would not see snow on the lawn in front of the office.  There was still slivers of snow left the day before the special date. But it rained during the night and washed all of that away.  No snow was to be seen on that day.  During the night, we got a fresh coating of snow.  They refused to pay the bet even though there was no snow to be seen on that date.  I will admit, it was just sheer luck the way things went. But, we have indeed seen more than six months of snow in these mountains. That leaves less than 120 days of warm sun tan weather.  We just got a big chunk of that. So that makes June, July, and August for the remaining warm weather. We have seen snow in September covering those nicely colored leaves. This is just a gentle reminder to you folks that decided to enjoy these mountains. What we call summer is the time we use to prepare for the next winter. When you go to planting your garden keep this in mind. Do not plant very many edibles that take more than 80 days to harvest their fruit. Soon it will be time to start all your plants inside then transfer to the selected area. For many years, I have tried this method. But it hardly ever works out for me. When the sun gets hot, I get busy. Then I just happen to look at my tender young plants and they are sick. Someone has forgotten to water them the last few days. So I just go out and buy young plants I want to put in my greenhouse. I thought they would be safe but not so.  I looked out one morning and the porcupine was helping himself to anything green.  Another morning, I had other visitors. The many deer I had been feeding during the cold winter months were visiting. They were helping themselves to the lilies, tomato plants, and anything that looked tasty. This is just the price I have to pay for being nice. I have tried many methods and they usually work for a week or two. But then one young buck gets brave and that starts it all over again. I holler at them, and they do run away to the safety of the woods. They pretend I can’t see them and wait until I leave. One of them gives the all clear sign and here they come. I have a lilac tree that I planted around 1998 and it is only 6 feet tall. This is the time of year the buggers help themselves to the buds. Fences, noise makers, colored ribbons, and soap works for a while, but not on a day such as today.  I see them come out and eye the tree but they turned away. They saw, I saw them looking at my lilac. I tapped on the window and warned them I still had the bb gun. I will admit, I have plinked them in the rump a time or two if they got near my lilac.  Once in a while, they will be brave and just try to stare me down. But when I show them the bb gun, that helps them decide to leave. I do like all the animals that come by to visit. I guess the fault is mine for being nice and feeding them when  the weather is bad.  But then, aren’t people like that too. You spend time being nice but in the end you wish you could plink them in the buns.  I guess it really is a good thing, that I stay in the woods and behave myself.

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