I woke up later than usual, probably because I first woke up at 3:30 and couldn’t get back to sleep for a while. But eventually I did. So when 7:30 rolled around, I rolled out of bed, made a delicious coffee, grabbed my phone and sat down outside on the sun-filled back porch. I took a blissful first sip, opened WP Reader, started reading and went to take another sip when something stopped me.

Do you see it?

So pissed off.

Look, most bugs don’t bug me if they stay off my body or outside of my immediate vicinity, and I’ve been known to fish out the odd fruit fly from a water glass, but these house flies?

Ick.

So gross.

I see them landing on raw meat juice in the kitchen, dog poop outside, and god knows where else. I will not drink fly-juice-infused coffee. Just…no.

So I got up, poured the ruined coffee down the sink, and made another one. I hate waste. But I just couldn’t drink that….

***

A little later, I’m drinking my second/first coffee listening to the birdsong, reading blogs. This is my solution for the pesky flies:

There’s a funny post by a fellow Canadian blogger about lawn care.

It resonated with me because we recently laid sod in our backyard, and my partner here has been looking after the entire process.

I helped initially. Gardening is usually my domain.

Two years ago I started digging up the back part of the lawn with a borrowed rototiller. He helped, of course, the motorized machinery being the attraction.

The kids were later commanded to help with shovels and rakes and eventually we had to stop because work/sports/lack of money and all that. I laid industrial-strength landscape fabric over the exposed, dead-looking soil and left it over winter.

Last year before we went to Switzerland on vacation, the weather was wetter and colder for twice the usual amount of time in spring so the lawn kept getting ignored. It was too muddy for any work to be done back there.

In the fall I fixed the landscape fabric patches that were ripped with new fabric and hoped the following spring we’d be able to finally complete this project.

Well, it’s 2020 and hell and high water arrived along with corona, murder hornets, closed borders, tantrum-throwing foreign and local politicians, lock-down quarantine, excessive family togetherness, extreme weather and now apparently Godzilla the Dust Plume is inching toward North America’s east coast.

Did I miss anything? Never mind.

But. The quarantine stopped the money spending and left us with suddenly more free time to deal with the lawn situation.

The man here started his science-based approach of researching and analyzing and shopping, and began the lawn care in earnest.

He started with a pH kit that measured soil quality (or lack of quality – it was dead and completely deficient of any nutrients which explains why none of the grass seeds ever took).

Then he ordered soil and dirt and compost by the truckload. Those huge bags were lifted in by some beeping forklift thingy one morning. It sounded like a whole slew of cement mixers were backing up on our driveway.

Next, child labour was activated and the ground was turned over again with shovels and rakes, after I removed the fabric.

Long story a tad shorter, we now have sod. And, the sprinkler is on every morning for 30 minutes.

But.

Before he turns the hose on, he wanders around the perimeter of the yard to check for raccoon damage. The little buggers roll over all the edges to look for grubs. 😀

Fast forward to this morning.

I’m sitting here in my nighty with a fly-less cup of coffee and no contact lenses in my eyes, and no glasses. I can see everything nearby (i.e. my phone in front of my face) but my distance vision is blurry.

Which is why the husband here gave me a heart attack just now when he came stomping out the back door yelling something. 😳

“What’s wrong with you?” I said.

“Why didn’t you shoo the raccoons away,” he replied stomping down the steps to rescue the lawn corners around the veggie beds.

I looked over and squinted. They were hard to see without my glasses but I did recognize them: raccoons. 😄

There’s three of them. Babies. ❤

Anyway, he shooed them across the fence and…crisis averted. I guess. (Until tomorrow…)

I’m alone again, and I’m done typing my slice of life post. I’m also out of coffee.

It’s Friday!

BTW I have a new plan about a writing office. Perhaps I may blog about that later.