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Labor Day Labor


The only people for whom Labor Day really means anything are the people who labor.  With the exception of a few years early in life, and summers most of my life, I have not been a laborer.  I worked inside, wearing out books, and talking to students.  Summers were more fun, both physically and mentally, but I have not figured out what that means.  

 But this is Labor Day weekend, and I have retired, if not from my labors, then from creeping decrepitude, so I decided that it was time to mount a frontal--no, a back-yard-al--attack on the little patio behind our house.  

 It is hotter than Hades here in Tucson, although not as hot as it is in Phoenix, which we off-and-on-again Tucsonans consider to be only meet, right, and proper.  As a consequence, I have pretended that it is more important to worry-away at the boxes in our garage and house than it is to go outside and discourage the minimally-watered plants that thrive around the drip fittings.  They had spread their water-sensitive roots around the drip valves, but they leaned over toward the little flagstone patio to rest their long arms.  

 "Back!  Back!", I kept muttering as I tried to follow the river stones, created from a long-lost river in a long-lost past.  The plants really don't care.  They regard such brutal attacks as the flailings of inferior critters who could not do what they do easily:  they lean back, attend to their sustenance, and having noticed that they have less foliage to support than moments ago, tend to the task of gathering themselves for a vigorous new assault on nothingness by asserting new life.  

 It is a good way to live.  

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