This Floating WorldI can report success; I am somehow growing basil from last year's seed. It is still unclear if the little bits of green will survive, as the temperatures are dipping low these clear nights. They should; I have at least two, and perhaps more to come.
The spinach should like the cool air more - there are two rows of that, now. The onions are in as well, in something of an experiment - they are somewhat late to go in, but I hope they will do well. Already the herb barrel has elevated dinner. The grass continues to grow.
Evidence of the season's turning abounds, now. The days have been clear and bright, with a soft hush thrown over everything in the high afternoon, echos from the torpid air that is surely coming for us. The twice daily walk through the woods is thickening, too, with the views becoming obscured behind ever denser green, pulling the focus ever closer. The raspberry canes under the trees by the uprooted stump are setting tiny fruit.
In my own little patch, the strawberries have gone riot, and the bed and yard both are dotted with little white flowers, each holding promise of sweetness.
Vieni, l'estate. Ci unisci.
ElementsFor dinner, I mixed toasted cumin and minced shallot into some ground beef with a bit of egg for binder, and shaped half of it to be fried each side and then a little bit more under a slice of a good pecorino. I ate that on the porch between two thick slices of good toast. Coming back inside was a treat; the entire first floor was in the blast radius of toasted cumin and fried shallots. It still lingers. Tomorrow holds the promise of eating the other half, fried in little sausages and mixed in with rice. For tonight, I will light the lamp and settle in the hammock.
One of the useful things about the hammock is the perspective it can lend, there at the edges of the gentle swings. For the past little while, most of my time in the yard has been (mostly) upright, looking over the bits and pieces of the place, and what to do next. The other common vista of the yard comes from the porch, elevated to better afford a longer view. In the repose of the hammock, all of this is sent on its side, and the yard takes on new aspect. If there is a place you know well, perhaps from childhood, I would recommend going there to lie down and look around. It may reveal things to you.
The hammock is good for other things. There is a ball field, down there in the little bowl of the valley. At nights, they sometimes turn the lights on for games, and the air shines with the insects in flight. Some of those nights, the wind is right, and the tap of a ball on an aluminum bat pings soft up the hill to reach the house and the hammock, a quiet sound that is another unmistakable marker of the coming summer.
Sometimes, there is cheering.
Weights and MeasuresWhen it is time to shop, I most often do not go to the supermarket. Instead, I head down riverward to the loose collection of markets and shops kept in a slim strip of land just north of the city. It is not the same; there is bustle, and jostle, and very often scant room on the pavement in amongst the stalls. The food is better, though; the food is astonishing. As I've become better at finding meals and parts of meals there, the number of things for which I must attend the supermarket has steadily dwindled. Those items are few now, and as of recent one less: one of the shops has started selling eggs.
The strangest thing about the eggs is that they are unclassified. It says so right on the carton. It says other things on the carton, too: free range, no antibiotics, hormone free, vegetarian diet. These are all good things to look for in eggs, but the word unclassified doesn't show up much on egg cartons, and it took me a moment to remember what that meant. Then, to open the lid to peek at a dozen eggs:
...all of different sizes.
They are wonderful, of course. The yolks are a golden yellow, and stand proud in the bottom of the bowl before the fork comes. They are rich eggs, with terrific flavor. They cause problems: when I make pasta from scratch, I have a pretty good idea how much flour should be mixed with a large egg. These are not large eggs. These are eggs with no size except the ones they happen to be, leaving me to muddle through and let my hands remember how the dough should be. It worked out fine. I wonder how this will affect baking.
It used to be like this. It used to be that one yawned, stumbled from bed to catch a toe on the washstand in the thin predawn light, hopping and limping and cursing on down to the barn to carefully fetch breakfast from underneath the hens. The hens gave no damn about sizes.
It is still strange to see a carton of different eggs. I think this tells me that I have been doing it wrong.
FlowThis house in which I sit does not have central air conditioning. Well, not in any conventional sense. The way to deal with air in this house is to do it the old fashioned way: open the windows. I don't mind this at all. It must be said that a large part of this is because when they built this place, there was no inkling of such beasts as central AC, so they built for summers. The ceilings are high. There are transoms over the doors (and they work, more glory). There are ceiling fans in most every room. Complex systems of cross breezes and outflow can be constructed, making curtains shiver and dance, or press upon the screens. I have a window AC unit that came with the house, and a good one it is, too, but I don't use the thing. I don't much need to.
One of the neat side effects of using one's windows for air is that the outside comes in with it. The windows have been open all weekend, and the house has been rolling with sound. The birds sing their songs, and the breeze moves through leaves. The highway permeates the background as a gentle hum, with occasional punctuation of trucks finding gear or fast motorcycles finding acceleration. The fire engine wails as it comes down the hill, and I wonder at where it might be headed, and what it will do there. It is good to have the world leak into the house; it is good to be connected.
One drawback: the thunderstorms, sometimes. The strong ones lash this place with wind and rain. I am somewhat in the lee, here, but it is sometimes not enough with the mad ones, and they can throw water right through the screens. So I button up the windward windows, settle in to watch, ready to close the shutters in the study should I need to.
There's a storm coming.
The TelltalesRecent travels have put into focus the split, in some places, between the nature in which we live and the lengths we go to control it. The patch of land around the house is, I think, a useful mix. I chip away at the weeds and the grasses, and I hoe around the plants I wish to keep to mostly rid the garden of the plants I do not. The greenery is somewhat shabby, but not too much so, and I'd rather it this way. Not so much to annoy the neighbors, mind, but a soft edge is good to remember just what it is I'm doing out there. It is worth it to halt the toils to become still, and watch a fledgling robin try to make sense of the garden fence, tufts of down still poking from its head.
At night, all of that fades into shadow, usually. Above the patio is a motion sensing floodlight. I could put a switch on the thing so that it doesn't blast the hammock in the evenings, but: the floodlight has a timer, so if one is still in the hammock for long enough, it settles in and goes dim. The hammock is good for being still in, so this hasn't been too much of a problem, so far.
(There are reasons to twitch in hammocks, but they do not apply to me, no?)
Sometimes, when I step out onto the porch with the mandolin, it is slightly unnerving to see that the floodlight is on, brought to glaring bright life by something that wasn't me, at some point in the past 5 minutes, down there at the bottom of the stairs. It was in all likelihood just the neighbor's cat. It may have been the shadowy groundhog that has been making rounds. It may be Something Else. I have recently had experience with Something Else. But I hear nothing, and see nothing, and the light eventually fades, bringing back in the night.
Some nights, it is good to stop it all and just play the mandolin on the porch. Most nights, actually. When I remember.
The Toxics ComeOne of the problems of living high above the arterial highway down there in the valley is that bitumen floats. They are working on the road, down there, under bright lights. The great machines moan low. They must reek of the stuff to send the fumes all the way up here, on the wind: the breezes are being cruel this evening, and tote bad air. Back when the valley was filled with Mills, the tang in the air must not have been so strange. They will be done with the road soon.
Invaders have worked their way to the yard: poison ivy has found a comfortable home beneath the locusts. Well, it had done, anyway: with sleeves and socks and gloves and newspaper I pulled it, but it will likely be back. I must be careful there, now.
I pulled down some flowering boughs of the mock lime, and plopped them in a vase on the table. They are doing their best to sweeten the air. They are welcome.
All content under copyright by the author. Dancing is permitted. The strange deltic glyphs in the sand under tidal flow are a pleasure to watch in their deepening. Offer not valid in Kansas. We put it down and then we lost it. It all happens in the corner of the eye. Commentary accepted at pen@goob.com, although the traps are agressive and the pointy bits simply drip with dark liquour. We have a dog, but we do not own it. Thank you.