Dog Days of Fall

This time of fall is not unlike the ‘dog days of summer’. All the main activities in preparation for winter are generally done, at least they should be. Like having the woodshed filled with firewood, any items you don’t want hidden under snow put in, stakes with red flags drove into the ground on each side of the driveway. Now that is an important item, if you have deep ditches! Having learned that lesson the hard way I try very hard to get them up before the ground freezes, not that it is a major job; it is a memory thing.

However, my memory as to why we put up the flags is very clear. A few years ago I was plowing a deep snow, one in which the wind had done its job of piling the ditches even with the driveway and the surrounding area. Not until I felt the front end of the tractor “disappear” did it dawn on me that I was off the ‘high ground’ and into the ditch. Not a nice place to be on a cold day with the drive still plugged with snow. I did manage to exit the ditch, but only because I was so far from the driveway that I totally missed the culvert, if my front tires had caught the culvert it would not have been so easy to get out, thus put up the flags.

In the ‘dog days of summer’ we outdoors people are ready for fall activities. Fishing is never very good that time of year, it is generally too hot to hide out in the woods with the mosquitoes scouting for deer season, there is just not many “fun” things to do, unless it is “work”, which is not much of a distraction from itself.

So now we are in the ‘dog days of fall’. Deer season is over (in MN), the lakes have not yet frozen enough for “normal people” to venture out on them. I say “normal people” because I know some folks, of Finnish origin, in one small town who are always on the lake fishing before the ice is thick enough to hold a mouse! I am not afraid of ice, but I would rather not have it moving up and down as I walk on it! There is not enough snow for snowshoeing, it is too warm to be ‘interesting, it needs to be around -20 with some wind before it is any fun to just roam around aimlessly, for the pure joy of knowing you are along in the woods.

I have a theory that the reason the “holiday season” is so popular is because people get bored in the ’dog days of fall’. What better way to get folks excited than create a annual shopping season, which I note gets earlier every year. Soon the ’big box’ stores will meet themselves ’a-coming’, by the time they get the spring clothing sales done they will be promoting “Christmas” sales in June!

I also observe that this ‘holiday’ business is infectious, as in young girls getting into the season. This afternoon I saw my 11 year old daughter dragging last years Christmas tree up out of the woodlot where she had stashed it last winter, to the door of her playhouse. I ask her what she was doing with that tree? She said she was setting it up in her playhouse to decorate! So much for my “good influence”. I had helped her ‘decorate’ with some steel traps, axes, BB-gun, deer antlers and such things fit for a playhouse, I would never have thought of a Christmas tree! So she is obviously infected, with what appears to be an incurable disease, judging from what I see in other “ladies” who love the “holidays”.

Wait! Maybe there is hope. The last I talked to her, she was on her way outside with a plan of getting out a sled, tying her Beagle to it and using him as a ‘sled dog’! I ask her how she was going to get him to pull, she said she was going to turn a cat loose in front of him! I only hope she has a plan for when that cat shoots underneath a low building, for sled on not, that dog will be on its tail.
Too bad we don’t all have the imagination and ambition of a child.
Happy ‘dog days of fall’.