day of yardwork

I needed the exercise, and the yard needed mowing. And I also cut more brush (the city still has not picked it up, despite my having been told either it would be the first Wednesday or the first Saturday of the month but I think I just keep adding to the pile as I work and figure someone will get it eventually. Yes, it will kill the grass under there but it's just the....well, in Ohio I think they called it a "devil strip" - the little strip between the sidewalk and the street, which I have been told I technically do not own anyway (despite everyone having their mailboxes on their little strip there)

I also got a few more plants at Lowe's - four Veronicas (two pink, one purple, one that I thought was purple but might actually be white), and a coreopsis, and a couple more herbs (a German thyme and an oregano). So after mowing and doing some cutting I dug up spots for them and planted them, and then did a bit more cutting while the sprinkler worked on them.

I also found the hose I have the sprinkler on will stretch to the front of the house, so I can water the Turk's cap when they need it, and also the few snapdragons that either came back from last year's roots or were ones that seeded in after last year. That makes it easier.

I also got a red callibrachoa basket in hopes of providing for the hummingbirds. I admit I am *tempted* to get a feeder despite the required weekly cleanings - I mean, what do I have OTHER than time right now and for the rest of this summer?

But instead, I bought the last fragrant-geranium ("citronella" or "mosquito plant," though I thought citronella came from lemongrass) in a basket and put that on the other hook.

I will say one thing about being home this much this summer, my garden will benefit. I do have a lot more brush to deal with because stuff resprouts like crazy but I did manage to grub out a couple more root-chunks from mulberry, which is good - the more of these I can get gone, the less resprouting I have to deal with.

And again, I'm sitting at my living-room desk, watching as much of the sunset as I can see (there are trees and a house in the way) before the little solar-powered LED light stakes come on for the night.

The sun sets out over the lake here; the lake is to my west. I can't SEE it of course; it's a good fifteen miles from me. But somehow in the summer it's nice to know it's there. Perhaps this year if somewhere is having fireworks for the fourth that is not too far away, I actually will consider braving making the drive out (and back, after dark - my night vision is not the best) so I can see them clearly; it seems like little celebrations are more important now.

And listening to, oddly enough, a "Yacht Rock" playlist on YouTube. This amuses me because I was around when much of this music was first popular, except it was called either AOR or soft rock or my fellow teens (what is up, fellow teens?) just made gagging noises about it.

And yet. And yet, I cannot bring myself to sneer at it. It's smooth, yes, and has an impersonal edge to it, but it's well-produced and by and large it is upbeat. (I do not care for the Ur-Yacht Rock song, though - the Pina Colada Song - because it's fundamentally about two people who played themselves thinking they were going to cheat on their partner.....and it turned out to be WITH their partner)

I don't know. In the past year I've expanded my musical tastes a lot. I have a whole playlist I use a lot during workouts on Pandora, that's a mix of early 70s singer/songwriter type stuff, plus some....whatever you call ELO and Supertramp....and also David Bowie and Queen and sometimes it will find something really odd and that doesn't quite fit, like a country singer doing "I'll Fly Away" or "What a Wonderful World" (mostly I just let the oddball stuff stand; for some of the "hard" country or songs I simply do not like I hit the thumbs-down button and they don't come back)

But....Yacht Rock is not bad. I like that name for it better because it feels more descriptive than the older "AOR" name. And yes, I know it was originally used pejoratively, the idea of the stereotypical yuppie on his stereotypical yacht, except I know people who have rather small boats or pontoon boats out on the lake here, and they (ironically) refer to them as their "yachts" and I can imagine someone sitting out on a boat on the lake listening to this music, because it's relaxing. Or it's picnic music, I think of it as that, too.

Like I said: a lot of it was released during my teen/tween years, and even though I was more of a WCLV listener in those days, it was kind of ambient and so I am familiar with a lot of it. (And I secretly liked Air Supply as a teen, even though I knew people would laugh at me for that, perhaps even more than they would for my liking classical music).

But....I think as we age things that we derided as hopelessly unhip as teens comes back and is greeted with new nostalgia. I've written before of how I was quietly disappointed in college when a couple of my dorm-mates found the John Denver and the Muppets Christmas album (which our family had and I liked) and making fun of it. I didn't SAY anything - because one thing I learned was that if I stuck up for something I liked that someone who seemed to have more clout than I did was laughing at, I got laughed at.

But then....I can't remember if it was in grad school, or if it was through online friends I made after moving down here, LOTS of people have been like "Oh, 'John Denver and the Muppets'! I loved that album! It made me happy" and maybe either I find my people, or maybe people lose some of the "cool at all costs" attitude with age.

But yeah. Yacht rock, because the news of the world is still bad and getting worse, and the happy upbeat summery music helps drown out my realization that I cannot do anything to make anything better, sitting where I am at home. (Well, maybe by continuing to sit at home I can make things a tiny bit better by not contributing to the "second wave" which is really actually the first wave here.... but yeah, I am kind of dreading a second round of tighter lockdowns that may be coming)

So yes: yacht rock, take me away. Hopefully someday in the not-impossibly-long future there will be the chance to go to picnics again, and cookouts, and to do stuff in groups of people without worrying.