Summer Is Over

Meredith and I are finally getting settled in, and we’re starting to develop routines. My routine is to head out to the workshop, a.k.a., the Man Cave, early in the morning and stay out there most of the day. That way I don’t get in Meredith’s hair and vice versa.

This part of this post is being written early in the morning in the workshop at a little writing spot I’ve set up. The sun is just starting to come up, and it’s a damp, foggy fall morning. The temperature is 50 degrees, and I’ve got my little electric heater going. It’s quite comfortable.

Meredith just texted me from the cabin that a group of young deer was working its way toward the workshop. Sure enough, I can see six deer out the window I’m facing. They are browsing in the upper pasture about 100 feet away. Every moment or so one of them looks up in my direction, stares for a few seconds, twitches its tail, and goes back to grazing. It’s probably trying to figure out the strange light shining from the workshop windows. 

I acknowledge Meredith’s text, and she texts back that their parents have probably been killed by hunters. I think watching Bambi as a child had a profound effect on her. I was more a Davy Crockett type of guy. I doubt the deer’s parents have been killed by hunters. I think it is more likely that this is the time of year when young deer are kicked out of the family. It’s like me sending my kids off to college. The good news is that under Affordable Care Act, the young deer can stay on their parents’ insurance.

It’s safe to say that it is no longer summer here in the north Georgia mountains. The temperature was 24 degrees in the garden at 5:30 in the morning the other day. I know this because the remote sensor I installed near the garden broadcast the temperature to a monitor in the kitchen. I don’t want to give you get the false impression that I dragged my ass out there to get the reading. Hell no. I was in the kitchen watching the morning news on television broadcast via Direct TV while wearing my flannel snuggies and sipping a hot cup of coffee that our automatic coffee maker brewed to be ready the second I rolled out of bed.

I know that I said that one of my objectives in moving here was to learn the old way of living and doing things. I also know that automatic temperature sensors and coffee makers and satellite television is not the way our forefathers lived. In my defense, I never said I wanted to live like the colonial Americans did. I’m curious, not nuts.

I know that it’s no longer summer here, but I don’t know whether to say that it’s fall or autumn. I have come to appreciate that there is a difference between the two. On an autumn day the air is cool and the sky is clear. The leaves on the trees display brilliant autumn colors of red, yellow, and orange. Dried cornstalks stand tall in the fields. High overhead you can hear the shrill scree, scree call of a red tailed hawk as it circles looking for a meal. Fallen leaves dance and tumble merrily in your wake when you drive down a country road. You want to be outdoors. An autumn day marks the end of summer; it is a time of harvest and thanksgiving, and the mood is joyful.

A couple of days ago we had what I consider our first fall day. Low gray clouds heavy with moisture scudded across the sky. The air was chilly and damp. Rain drizzled intermittently, and a gusting breeze blew dead brown leaves out of the trees and along the ground. The harsh caws of crows could be heard among the trees in the lower pasture. It was a harbinger of coming winter, and the mood was foreboding and ominous. It was a day for staying indoors, reading a book, and hot soup.

It is not an original observation that Floridians and city dwellers do not experience the weather and changing seasons as intimately as country folk. In the short time I have been living here I find that I am more attuned to the weather and the seasons. There are good reasons for this. I live in a place where there are distinct seasons. I am retired and have the leisure to stop and appreciate the weather; I am not rushing to the office or to court with a mind full of things I need to do. I am outdoors most of the day rather than cooped up in a temperature controlled environment. Many of my activities, such as gardening, brush clearing, wood chopping, and the like, are affected by the weather.

Perhaps this is why I now appreciate that there is a difference between an autumn day and a fall day. I have to believe that primitive man and the early settlers to this country were similarly affected and impacted by the weather and the seasons. In this sense, my experiment is starting to bear fruit, and I am beginning to learn the old ways of living and doing things.

An infestation. As if the squirrels, spiders, and wooly caterpillars weren’t enough, we are now experiencing an invasion of ladybugs. No exaggeration, there are thousands of ladybugs crawling on the outside walls of our cabin and thousands more swarming in the air around the cabin. Meredith tried to blow them off the cabin with a leaf blower, but they just came back.

All this occurred in one day. They started arriving mid morning. By mid afternoon the ladybug convention was in full swing. I’m a little vague on the Bible, but wasn’t a swarm of ladybugs one of the plagues that God visited on Egypt? Maybe that was locusts. At any rate, I now have an idea of what that was like.

According to the guy who hooked up our emergency generator, this happens every fall. They never said anything about that in the brochures. The ladybugs, sensing that winter is approaching, look for a warm protected spot to spend the winter. Not all houses and areas are affected. Apparently the ladybugs have decided to spend the winter at our house this year. I’m honored, but no thanks.

All I know about ladybugs is that they are cute and loveable, they don’t bite, and they eat aphids. Given the number of ladybugs that are currently roosting on the walls of my cabin I doubt there is an aphid in Fannin County.

One or two ladybugs is okay. Thousand of ladybugs is an infestation. They land on your glasses, crawl into your clothes, and fly into your ears. They enter the house when you open a door. They are driving the dog nuts. They are driving me nuts.

We are researching to see if there is anything that can be done. So far we have not found a solution. The electrician mentioned that there may be a pheromone you can buy that sexually attracts the ladybugs. The idea would be to place this pheromone someplace away from the house to lure the ladybugs away.

I don’t know if that’s a good idea. If our information is correct, they are attracted to our cabin because it is a warm place to spend the winter. So now we are going to put out something that will attract them sexually. Won’t that just attract more ladybugs (and horny ones at that) and add to our problem? What happens when they are all sexed out? I think they are going to want to roll over and go to sleep in a warm place which means our cabin is back on their radar.

I can’t wait to see what else nature is going to throw at us. Do they have lemmings in north Georgia?