The best month.

This is the best time of the year. It was 47 degrees this morning, and will be a high of 79 this afternoon. The leaves are green. What breeze there is is mild. Not a cloud in the sky.

We made it through the long death march of summer.

My okra are producing. My squash are producing. My tomatoes and peppers are... well, the PLANTS are flourishing, but they're not making much in the way of fruit (I think that I've got a soil imbalance that I need to correct).  My green beans and peas are going great guns. The pecan trees are laden with nuts that will probably open in early December.

I don't sweat everywhere I go. I'm about to switch to a larger off-duty pistol.

We've got outdoor projects that I will actually attend to.

October is my birth month, and I celebrate it the whole danged month.

Sports. Really?

And so yet again we have another example of sports fans* behaving badly. In today's story, some drunken supporters of the Kansas City Chiefs football team beat hell out of a guy wearing a New York Jets football jersey, after he (a firefighter and son of a FDNY firefighter) expressed concern when they yelled at him that New Yorkers got what they deserved on 9/11.

The lifelong Jet fan suffered a fractured jaw, cheekbone and eye socket, and also has bleeding on the brain.

I like to watch a good game of professional football or baseball or basketball, on occasion. I just don't kid myself that the team matters much, beyond college, or even high school. Players are swapped around like interchangeable pieces, and the guy who played hard for your team may play harder for the avowed team nemesis, next year. Most players at the professional level don't play for the town that they grew up in, except by accident. When it happens, it's a noteworthy rarity.  Heck, even the move from city to city, on occasion. So it is that the fan is usually rooting for a uniform. Like the Dallas Cowboys? You're rooting for silver and blue and white laundry.

So  never have really gotten the whole sports rabidity thing. It is my understanding from Cowboys fans that one is risking injury to wear a Dallas Cowboys-branded piece of apparel into a Philadelphia Eagles home game. What the hell?!? Israel and Jordan can play each other at the Olympics with less strife.

I've pointed out my dismay over such things in the past, and I understand that most sports fans aren't like this. But ask yourself, sports fan: why does this matter so much to you?

But we excuse such behavior on and off the field of play by the players, and permit them to keep their multi-million dollar jobs, so I guess that it's expected, by some Associative Property, that followers would do so, too. Most of us would be fired from our jobs for intentionally assaulting another co-worker.

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*"Fan" being short for "fanatic."

You might be an idiot if...

You just might be everyone's favorite kind of idiot to hate, if you're the type who tips over cars and sets things on fire.... to celebrate your regional sports franchise winning this year's Sooper Series Bowl.

Idiots.

We're breeding our own sports hooligans.

Mid-morning walk.

I awoke to find my house empty. I was a bit ashamed that I hadn't helped take the girls to school, but my sleep schedule is difficult to regulate, sometimes.

I answered a message left by my boss, who needed something at work. I started the coffee, got dressed, and walked to work.

On the way in, I noticed that last week's break from the summer heat was over; when it's 88 degrees and 70% humidity at 10:15 AM, it's going to get hot, before the day is over. Still, a 10 m.p.h. breeze from the south made the walk pleasant. I arrived and tended to some business at work, discussed time off for a possible hunt this October, and walked back home.

Approaching a distant neighbor's dog, I could hear him barking furiously at me from a long ways off. How dare I intrude within the scope of his master's realm?!? He has some pit in him, and some other breed that I can't identify. I walked up and petted him through the fence, and he wagged his tail. It's all a big game.

Getting home, I wistfully looked at my next door neighbor's majestic pecan trees, and then gazed derisively at my own trash trees.

There's a reason that I'm planting pecan trees of two varieties about my yard, along with fruit trees and even an almond tree. I will soon cut down some hackberry trees in my yard, despite the dense shade that one of them provides.

I stepped inside my house, frustrated that a short walk could bring sweat to my oversized brow, shaded or not. I was greeted by the cool quiet air conditioning of a distinctively empty house, and the smell of fresh coffee.

There are things to do before autumn comes.