Me to feed store guy this morning: "Got a bit chilly last night, right?"
Feed story guy to me: "Sure did! Almost had to turn off the air conditioning!"
We grinned at each other and had one of those moments where you share nice feelings with someone you hardly know. In this case the feelings were because 1) we've just about made it through another sizzling summer and 2) we're heading into months and months of pleasant weather.
Unlike the guy who runs his a/c all night, I just sleep close to an open window and around 3AM had to get up and rummage around for the light cotton blanket I'd put away last spring. Nice chilly sleeping weather.
We're still making our way through the monsoon season, which means (at least this year) that we have lots of rainfall and everything here in the Mesilla Valley is nice and green. The weeds are outrageous, of course, but I just try to think of them as fresh salad greens for the chickens.
The garden is out of control; all planting plans have been lost in the mists of last spring. It was way too hot all summer to venture out to do any weeding, since there was never a morning early enough to beat the sun. The plants that couldn't stand the heat frizzled up and the plants that made it through to this rainy time of year are romping all over the place.
Take a look at these morning glories--they love everything about this time of year. However, they have embraced and dragged down my poor sunflowers; and I'll bet no one can see the tomato plant that has been completely overtaken. It's somewhere under there on the left, but I lost sight of it last month. No matter--it was my first time to plant a Sweet 100 cherry tomato and it was a whole lot less than successful. Tiny nasty-tasting tomatoes that even the chickens didn't want.
The four o'clocks are still happy, although their brief daily blooming time is more like six o'clock (AM), so for most of the day they are closed up. All through the garden are the volunteers--giant clumps of marigolds and columbine that just appeared, and a small field of self-seeded zinnias out in front of the house.
Forgive me. All the babbling about this and that is really my way of whistling in the darkness of a very scary world, full of cruel tragedies--Barcelona terror attack today, Charlottesville Nazi marchers and the death of a young woman a few days ago. The specter of white nationalism in my own country is a nightmare.
So, I've chosen to talk about flowers and weather and the small joys to be found in my own backyard, where hidden seeds spring up into something beautiful. I really don't know what else to do at this moment.
4 comments:
Thank you for these bright spots in the darkness.
We have to take refuge from the outside world - flowers seem to me a lovely refuge indeed.
This is not the world I grew up in...all this violence. When I was a child and my mother bought a house, we never owned the key. The seller had lost it years ago. We never needed a key. In the 18 years I lived in my hometown, there was only one murder and it was a bootlegger who was killed three miles away from my small Kansas town,,,in Oklahoma. It was a safe world in the small town I live in. There are very few safe places anymore.
I believe that is where most of us are right now Clair ... looking for the bright spots because we don't know what else to do. Anyway, I keep blogging as if I were Pollyanna -- seeing only the good in life -- and there IS still a lot of beauty and good to be blogged about -- as your posts show. But I too worry and wish I knew something else to do.
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