The sounds of summer

Just like the song in this video says....


(Thank you, Hot Club of Cowtown, for this fantastic little ditty.)

"Heaven.....I'm in heaven...and my heart beats so that I can hardly speak..."

Why?

Because we now have a killer sound system in our backyard! Oh yeah, baby, now we can relax out there, take a dip in the pool (well, all of us except for the One-Armed Buckaroo, what I've started calling our little man), and watch the clouds float lazily by, all while enjoying our favorite tunes. This little music freak is in heaven.

Last year we bought some awesome outdoor speakers (which sounded better than the Bose ones we compared them to AND they were cheaper, who doesn't love that?!), but we never got around to hooking the whole operation up. So this afternoon my husband got busy and made it happen while I worked inside syncing my iPod. Um, yeah, the iPod that I haven't used in the almost 2 years that I have owned it. Yipes. But baby I'm using it now!

So I'm declaring this the year that I turn into a Summer Girl. Typically my favorite two seasons are Fall (first and foremost) and Spring -- summertime never makes the cut because of how atrocious it can get between the heat, the humidity, and the mosquitoes. But this summer I am vowing to love it -- to spend as much time outdoors as possible (maybe not in the heat of the day), and to crank up the tunes outside as often as I want to. This evening we three enjoyed our meal of fried chicken (finger-lickin' good, if you catch my drift), mashed potatoes and gravy, biscuits, ice water, and ice cream, enjoying the gorgeous weather with some Hot Club of Cowtown drifting in the breeze. Those speakers are so crystal clear I thought I had my own western swing combo playing right there next to the dog house.

Sweet honey, do I have some plans to play lots and lots of music this summer! There could be whole evenings devoted to Pink Martini, or Zee Avi, or Fleet Foxes, or, or, or...believe me, the list could go on and on. Maybe I should just stick a sign in the front yard with a music festival schedule listed on it...

***

A couple of weeks ago we were declaring ourselves the rednecks of the neighborhood as our backyard had um, well, gone a little south in the upkeeping department. The pool was so atrocious that we had no other alternative but to drain the whole thing and give it a good scrubbing. I say "we" lightly, haha, as I was only the moral support (or annoying support, depends on which way you look at it, from my viewpoint or my husband's).

Here she is, all emptied and almost completely cleaned out:



And then today, I snapped a few pictures of how the backyard is looking so far:





We still have quite a few projects to tackle -- finish painting the house and doghouse (this is summer #3 of that project), cut down the wall of bushes you see between the pool and the fence, and put the canvas and outdoor curtains back up on the pavillion. But hey, now we can tackle them singing a happy song while we do it! Ha.

And, last but not least, this was another thing accomplished today, the hanging of this:



Anyone want to take a gander at what (hopefully) will soon be taking up residence in that cedar box?

Let me give you a hint: mosquitoes are their meal of choice.

You Harry Potter fans out there might appreciate it -- BATS! For my birthday I received two bat houses from my mom (and yes, I actually requested them myself). We are hoping the little lovelies move on in pronto so the feasting can begin. Apparently 40-50 of those little suckers (haha, no pun intended) can stuff their little selves up in one of those boxes, and each one can eat more than 1,000 mosquitoes per hour. I can already bet that several of you are now thinking they are a little less creepy just for that. They leave humans and animals well alone, so I, for one, am not freaked out by them whatsoever. In fact, I hope to be camped out in the yard come dusk to watch them take flight one of these days.

So if you want to join me in praying for the bats to come, I'd love it. (And no, I am not kidding.)

I'll keep you posted...