And Suddenly September

I have just figured out why I keep not writing a blog post when I expect I will. Weather.

When it is warm. When the sun shines. I am out and not writing.

When it hot and humid. I am drained and not writing.

When it is precipitating, likeliest time that I will be writing.

It is raining. It has intermittently since midnight poured, rained, stilled. I am so grateful for this rain here. Also that the basement, which is well settled within a high watertable, and is equipped with a sump pump, a dehumidifier that runs all summer (and the outflow of which as mentioned in a previous post, waters my vegetable and window box gardens), and a wet dry vacuum for when the previous two means are overwhelmed, is so far today, dry floored.

The geography of weather seems to be ever more extreme, perhaps still predictable in its type, it is no longer anticipatable in its extent. We are all participants in a wild world.

And it seems I can’t stop talking about it. Oh for the days when weather was local. Oh for the times when life was local, and self-sufficiently so! Those times, I admit, well preceded my personally fairly urban-centric lifetime. Perhaps if I had been raised on a farm, or in one of those small towns through which we occasionally pass on the way to vacationing in some other far-flung where (where, passing through, in the long ago 20th century and first two decades of the 21st century I used to wonder, how do they make a living?), those times may have been more current for me.

But can we live locally anymore? Many, many of my fellow townspeople in our 110,000 population, magnificently diverse city do manage to raise admirable summer vegetable gardens in tiny plots owned, rented, borrowed, or purloined by them. I have even consumed from my own garden abundant arugula, some tomatoes, some cucumbers, some beets. But other than vegetables, what else? What else in anyone’s life these days can be provided, produced at one’s homestead or close neighborhood? By the way, the hoped for buttercup squash I wrote about last time was not. It is gourds. Perhaps one of you can use them to decorate? I am at a loss for what to do once I tire of seeing them draped colorfully over the fence, stakes, and other obstacles that they in their persistent crawl forward latch onto.

We cannot. We live and breathe and have our being where we are, but not without enormous input, not without provision from somewhere else, be it the copper in our electronics, the lithium in our batteries, the variously provided cloths in our clothes, the growing elements that comprise our clothes, furniture, food, the chemically produced, extracted, extruded items that comprise our same clothes, furniture, vehicles, possessions (from what are these chemical elements derived? yes, something somewhere not here, or here, and depleting).

Perhaps, as I reread this post, I shouldn’t write during rain. I might be more cheerful on a day of sun, low humidity, moderate temperature, with a sweet breeze, and on the heels of days with just enough precipitation to make earth Eden.

So! Will I not post this? No such luck. I will post it. I will hope you are still reading to this point. I will hope you have found cause for delight today, and that it is unshakeable. Taking a cue from myself, I will say that I delight in the friendships with which I am graced. I also delight in your patience and kindness, and how each friend also is a provider of wisdom.

And, just because I am so enamored of so many trees, including and notably, tulip poplars, here you go.

Don’t tell my neighbors, and don’t tell the squirrels, chipmunks, rabbit, opossums, blue jays that I have planted a couple of hickory nuts, a white oak acorn, a scarlet oak acorn, and a beechnut variously in my copiously growing, rather wild albeit tiny backyard. Maybe one will grow up and fill in where the very sadly aging, failing dogwood becomes more and more a host to and housing for woodpeckers (downy, hairy, and red bellied), nuthatches, sparrows, purple and house finches, blue jays, cardinals, and titmice, with occasional visits by carolina wrens, and like all things, ages and sags within its skin. I love that dogwood. So do all the above! It makes for a busy backyard, and will until it no longer can.

May you have joy today, in whatever way, in whatever surprise, may you have joy.