The four seasons

Vivaldi’s classic work celebrates the seasons. Clearly he was not a homeowner. Although it is fall at present, let us begin at the beginning.
Spring, the awakening of all things, includes all that creepeth and crawleth. Pest control businesses loves this time of year. Things that sneaked into your gables and cellar ways last fall make their appearance. Omigod! They are literally eating my house!
Greenery becomes rampant, especially the lawn which, at this time of the year, needs to be cut about every three days if you don’t want to lose your pets and small children.
Eventually things calm down as we move into summer. The grass dries out and goes dormant as the heat builds and rain becomes sparse. Somehow the mosquitoes survive. Look around the yard and you will find all sorts of little containers and water traps that they are breeding in, including those empty beer cans that Uncle Ned left behind the shed.
Now that the hot weather is here, it is time to put the air conditioners in and replace that old energy-deficient clunker. Of course, you waited until the first heat wave hit to do this. The stores are out of the nice little, lightweight window units now, and all you can find is the Blizzard 50,000, suitable for a meat warehouse.
The alternate choice, and the one for which I opted, is the Windmill Fan with a blade off of a P-47. In the old days, this is what everybody had and it was the reason that paper weights and heavy shoes were invented. If you have never had a really big fan, prepare to fetch papers, blankets, pets and small children as they are blown into the dining room.
u      u      u
Ah, the beauty of fall. I get to spend a lot of time with the leaves, My backyard is ringed with really big trees. My leaf pile is, basically, my entire backyard. I stopped trying to haul them away several years ago. Now I just grind them up with the mower and whatever grass is killed in the process is that much less I will have to cut come next spring. Win-win.
Sometimes I get a little behind and the pile gets really deep. Has anyone seen Mikey and Spot today?
 Winter in all of its white wonderfulness rounds out the year. You have to fasten those little aerials with the glow orange flags to Junior and Rover so you can retrieve them after they are numb. On cold winter evenings we all sit around, drink cocoa and listen to the furnace as it burns up our life savings.
 Hang on. Spring is coming. (How soon we forget.)

Bill Abrams resides in Pine Plains, where he celebrates the changing of the seasons to the music of Vivaldi. Ahh, rejoice!