The Hazy Daze of Summer

We've had a few big fires around here the last couple weeks. We haven't had anything as bad as California has had; we've been blessed in that regard. We have gotten a lot of smoke from that direction, though, which surprised me--I didn't realize it could travel this far. Usually, the mountains to the southwest of us look something like this:

The other morning, as I went to let the dog out, they looked like this:

It was like we didn't even have mountains.

The smokey skies make pretty sunsets, though.

I can't believe how quickly summer is zooming by. I haven't even been wake boarding yet. Normally we go out on our friends' boat every week or every other week. But they sold their boat, and ordered a new one. They got a loaner from the dealership (they have hookups) while they're waiting for their new boat, but the dealer sold the loaner and my friends' boat isn't finished yet, so they're without boat for a little while. Somehow, our schedules have clashed; when they had a boat, we weren't able to go out with them, now that we're home and available, they have no boat. Hopefully we can get together with them so I can practice my wake boarding skills (not that I really have any skills, but I'd like to get some and practice them).

Since I'm home, and not out wake boarding, I've been trying to do some stuff with my front yard. It's all full of weeds and all the flowers from spring are long gone. I planted some wild flowers a month or so ago. They're just glorified weeds, really, but at least they have pretty flowers on them. It's been sort of a craps shoot trying to figure out what should stay and what should go as far as the front yard flora; I've left some plants in there only to find out a few days later that said plants become spikey flower-less giants, smothering the plants that actually produce flowers. I'm shocked at how fast they grow. After toiling and laboring for a few days (I even wore a hole in one of the fingers of my Martha Stewart gardening gloves. But I've actually had the gloves for a couple summers and they only cost three bucks, so maybe it was their time to go), I finally got all the weeds out of there. The problem with stretching it out over a couple days: there were so many weeds, huge ones, that they were starting to smother the other weeds. I'm just looking forward to next summer when my wild flowers really take hold and start growing like weeds, too. Then maybe I'll have a decent looking summertime garden. Now I just have to figure out what to do for Fall...