Hawken the Irish Wolfhound’s astonishing growth spurt has plateaued. He is still very much a puppy, but he is learning to mind a little at a time. I walk him on a circular route from the house to the front of the patch to the pond and back once or twice a day. It might be a half a mile. It tires him out, and he sometimes wants to stop and rest.

We had a huge rain last week, so I wanted to mow to keep up. The last thing I need is a forest to cut. Two nights ago I got started, but the John Deere riding mower’s battery suddenly died by the back gate. I drove down to it in my Nissan Juke and jump started it so I could put it away for the night in the garage, where I removed and tested the battery. Much to my annoyance, not only was it stone cold dead (putting out less than 9 volts), upon examination, it was a full-sized automotive battery. $100 battery in a lawn mower, John Deere? Really?

Yesterday I took the battery to town and decided I was going to make a $25 mower battery work, which only required attaching the cables in a slightly creative way. It worked fine.

I also recently got into the rafters in the garage and pulled down Abby’s father’s Johnson Messenger citizen’s band radio from the 1960s, hoping to power it up and see if it still works. I was unfamiliar with the connector, so I blithely asked several amateur radio groups of social media how to do it. After a litany of useless, patronizing comments, I decided that amateur radio operators on the internet are just as douchey as they are on the radio, and deleted all my memberships to all those groups. I don’t know why I thought otherwise, but all anyone wanted to do was look smart and try to make me look dumb. Goodbye.

Abby bought a new recliner this week. She loved her old one, but seldom sits anywhere else, and just wore it out. The replacement is a home theater chair, with electric reclination, lighted cup holders and footrest, and armrest bins big enough for a laptop computer.

It’s almost summer, so it’s melon season, and the grocery has my current favorite melon, the golden honeydew. If you get a chance, try one. They are sweeter and more complex than regular honeydew, and are softer and slightly less edgy than cantaloup.

With a puppy on the patch, it’s more evident than ever that our Chihuahuas are getting old. Max, who is 13, is getting kinda deaf, and Sierra, who is 12, has been blarfing on the carpet more lately.

They both certainly have a lot of life in them, but they definitely aren’t puppies any more, though Max plays and fights like a puppy, and Sierra spins excitedly, always counterclockwise, at dinnertime.