Weeds and baseball

Some people have a favorite season, and for many, it’s likely to be Fall. Cool nights, sunny days, leaves changing colors, the best of summer lingering just a little longer before the slide into stark, bare trees and icy winds with slicing rain, soon to be snow.

So it’s Fall. If you kept up scrupulously with your weeding the flower garden, do you give up now and let the leafy interlopers have their way with your lovingly tended perennials, knowing everything’s going to die back anyway? Walking past our church tonight, Kodiak and I noticed that that seems to be our groundskeeper’s attitude, as we saw some insidious weeds infecting an evergreen hedge.

In our backyard, I will usually make one final sweep, figuring maybe it will help in the spring. At the same time, I think about how I want things to look after the winter. For the first time in nine years, I ordered some more tulip bulbs for the front yard, about fifty or so. Something ate half of the ones I’ve had there—at least I think that’s what happened to them. Only the yellow ones, the red ones are still there. The new batch will be mixed hues. Maybe in seven months or so I’ll post a photo of what comes up.

Another sign of Fall is the end of the baseball season. Thanks to a friend in the Cleveland Indians front office, we get tickets to a few games each year, and one of those is usually the final game of the year, which was Sunday. Everything hung on this game in terms of our wild card chances for the playoffs. If we won and Boston lost, then we still had hope. As it was, Cleveland lost and that was that.

I took our son Shane, as I usually do, since his birthday comes at the end of the baseball season, and this is sort of a birthday treat. It turned out to be a spectacular one, as we wound up in one of the Indians’ suites. Free hot dogs and pop are cool features, not to mention the great view of the field. The wife of the Cleveland mascot was up in the suite with us, so that was our brush with greatness. Slider, the mascot, came up briefly and then went back to work.

Slider is a goofy character who does a great job of keeping things fun during breaks in the game. Our other son Patrick was once a mascot for a major bank in the area, and had the chance to hang out with Slider for one game, even throwing out the first pitch. Very heady stuff for a teenager.

OK, so now that baseball is over, at least for Cleveland fans, I supposed I can concede that summer is also finally over. I give up. It’s Fall. I’m not sure it’s my favorite season. I’m not sure I even have a favorite season, since each one has something to offer, except maybe Spring.

Time to weed one more time.