my lawn is toasted...spread on a little apricot jam

Part of what we struggle with here in the Sacramento Valley, a.k.a. Hades, Caleeforneeya, is the, you guessed it, HEAT! We've had a hot summer so far--hotter than I remember (but then my memory has been seared by the heat and aging, so we can't trust it for nothin'). We've already hit over 100 a few days in a row and we're in for several more days of 100 plus temps. Today it was 95 at 10AM and the expectation is that it will reach 108 degrees. I believe that's against the law. If nothing else, it's against the law I want to establish in my Camelot-style kingdom, thank you. But, until I have the creative powers, money and just plain clout to set up Camelot here in YC, I'll have to puddle through, oops, I meant muddle through the extreme temperatures.

This past week I have not been able to water my lawn in the evenings (my usual task and timing for this chore). I have been working late, taking care of some of my Mom's needs, and my attempts at watering my lawn after dark have not been successful. I end up with large puddles in some areas and dry-as-a-bone spots in others and I have night blindness so I can't see and I end up stumbling around like a woman bereft of her senses--no comments from my children, please. Suffice it to say that with the high heat and the lack of water, my lawn is toasted. I also have an apricot tree on one side of my house. My neighbors and I have picked hundreds of apricots (the tree has thousands on it, especially in the upper branches), but I can't get to the top of the tree, so I'm allowing Newton's law of gravity to assist me in unburdening my tree of the rest of its fruit. In the hot weather, this has a down side (no pun intended). The fruit is already warm while it is on the tree, however, when it drops and sits in the sun all day, it becomes jam. So now my toasted lawn has a layer of apricot jam on top of it. It glistens in the sun and looks lovely. Removing it from the grass is another story altogether. First I rake all the apricots and squished fruit, formerly known as apricots, into a few piles. Raking finishes the "jam making". Next I bend over (that sends the neighbors flying for cover) and, with gardening gloves in place, I attempt to pick up the gelatinous, gloppy apricot jamishness. I smear a lot of it onto the grass--I'm hoping this will help kill crab grass and dandelions, but I'm not optimistic--and then I put it in a plastic garbage bag inside my plastic yard debris bin. I drag this around from spot to spot under the tree until I've managed to pick up what is still in non-liquid form, including slippery little apricot pits. Next I try to pick up the bin to take it to the garbage can--now I would think that this "garbage" should be considered yard waste because it's organic material. But I would be wrong. It is considered garbage by the waste company serving our area, so I have to bag it and put it with my regular kitchen garbage. Congealed apricots are heavy. I don't know why they are so heavy because a regular apricot is not, but there is some law of physics at work here and the compilation of overly-ripe, smashed up apricots weighs about 10 times more than you (and your back) think it should. I can't quite get the bin up to my waist to carry it like a normal person, so I am relegated to hunching over, running spindly-legged to the garbage can. I finally get the bag into the can and pronounce my endeavor successful, knowing that I will have to repeat this effort at least 2-3 times a week until the remaining millions of apricots fall off my tree. At least the neighbors have free entertainment and my toasted lawn has jam aplenty.