DeKalb: Got no bone to pick with dog days of summer

The dog days of summer arrived about a month early this year. If you garden, like I do, you’ve noticed that everything is way ahead of schedule.

The combination of stifling heat and torrential afternoon thunderstorms has turned my backyard vegetable patch into a fountain of green.

The tomato plants are getting so tall I may need a step ladder come harvest time.

And as for the normally prolific snap beans, this year’s crop looks like it might set some kind of all-time record.

When I’m not in the garden pretending to be God’s gift to Southern horticulture, you can find me on our screened porch under the languidly turning blades of a Casablanca fan.

There’s nothing quite like a shady porch in the summertime, especially if you’re looking for a good place to do some daydreaming.

I pretty much solved every problem known to man last Saturday, so feel free to visit your neighborhood swimming pool or do some shopping this weekend. I’ve got everything figured out.

Another thing I do every summer is set aside time for a little serious reading.

The weighty tome I’m slowly making my way through this summer is Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick.”

If you’ve never read “Moby-Dick,” it’s a dreamy sort of philosophical book. You can get lost in it for hours at a time as the good ship Pequod sails the seas in search of the mysterious White Whale. Melville finished writing the book in the summer of 1851.

I have it on good authority that he penned more than a few pages while sitting on his porch in Pittsfield, Mass.

When I’m neither gardening, daydreaming, or doing heavy literary lifting, you can usually find me at Mystery Valley Golf Club, one of two public golf courses owned by DeKalb County.

Because of budget constraints, the county recently raised the rates at Mystery Valley for the first time in a very long time, but the raise was modest.

If you’ve never played a round of golf at Mystery Valley, put that on your list of things to do before the summer is over.

Both the people who run the club and the golfers who play there are as friendly and welcoming as any you’re likely to find anywhere.

And if there’s a better way to work up a summer sweat (or a glow if you’re a woman) than walking the fairways of a well-groomed golf course, I don’t know what it might be.

I’m all for taking things easy in the summer. For one thing, it’s too darn hot in Atlanta to take them any other way.