Happenings on the June calendar

 

Summer vacation thoughts dominate the mind.  It's harder to concentrate at work or at school. Ahh, it must be June.
A teacher said it best. She endured a tough day of grading tests, checking attendance records and completing reports. And then she confided to a friend, “Teaching school is like having a baby: they both take about nine months and the last day is the worst!”
Of course, it’s not easy for our kids either. There’s lots of pressure to get a good final report. But kids are a lot more sophisticated these days. Consider the case of the little fellow who brought home a less than splendid report card and presented it to his dad saying, “What do you think the problem is Dad, heredity or environment?”
At any rate, when school is finally out on that last day, you always hear the tearing up of homework and all that silly screeching and giggling.
You’d think teachers would conduct themselves with more dignity.
How's your garden coming along?
The month of June is when the garden starts to really take shape or becomes completely unmanageable. As a veteran gardener put it, “The Lord giveth, but the chinch bugs and cutworms taketh away.”
The lawn can also be a headache.  You work and work at it, but sometimes it makes no difference. Some years it’s just crummy.  I think the secret is simply — water.  Ever notice how beautiful the grass is during a really wet summer?  No dead spots, no brown spots, no bugs. It’s perfect! The grass grows thick and lush and chokes out all the potential bad stuff. 
The only problem is that it needs to be cut almost constantly. As soon as you put the mower away, those sneaky little grass blades leap up out of the ground and look like they need another cutting. There's no justice in gardening.
Now, if it's a dry summer, obviously you can water like crazy, but you have to learn to ignore the sound of the water meter ticking away all those water dollars. It’s like the guy said, “The grass may be greener on the other side of the fence, but the water bill is probably higher.” Remember the old days when water was cheap?
If you're like me, you’ll let Mother Nature do the watering on her own schedule. She’s not as predictable, but she charges less than the city.
 Let’s check the June calendar.
June 4, 1070 — Roquefort cheese was discovered accidentally. A shepherd left some cheese in a cave near Roquefort, France. The cheese went mouldy.  Voila! A new cheese was born. C'est magnifique. Also very powerful — aroma-wise.
June 8, 1786 — Ice cream was advertised in New York for the first time. People scoffed and said it would never catch on.
June 12, 1955 — Pro golfer Gary Player had one of those days. During a tournament, his ball landed within inches of an old stone fence. The fence made it impossible to take a backswing so he tried to hit the ball into the fence and bounce it back to the fairway. Unfortunately, instead of the fairway, the ball hit Gary on the side of the head and momentarily knocked him out cold. 
Sometimes these ingenious ideas work, sometimes you wish you’d taken the penalty stroke and moved on. (See “Phil Mickelson.”)
June 18 —  Father’s Day. Dads certainly deserve the salute, but any father who thinks he’s all-important should remember that North America honours dads only one day a year. Pickles get a whole week.
June 21, 1611 —  Henry Hudson was set adrift in an open boat by his mutinous crew. He shouted back to them: “You’ll see. Some day, they’ll probably name a bay and a store after me!”  
You tell ’em, Henry.
June 27, 1860 — The first running of the Queen's Plate, the oldest horse race in North America. Did you hear the one about the two jockeys who were talking, and one said: “You know, the horse I rode today had so much breeding, if he could speak he wouldn’t talk to either of us.”