summertime

It is deep summer and the noon times are stock still and buzzing with the sound of insects and the afternoons are too long and the evenings are sticky until the sweat cools. The beach is a few blocks away, but the roads that lead there are paved black and so we stay in, hiding out.

While making supper, I leave the stove, stepping out into the strange haze-filtered yellow light to collect herbs. Basil, dill, mint, tarragon; all of them, for every meal. Peaches, corn. What more do we need to live on?

We escaped the heat and went to the East Coast, where a steady breeze blew and every night was right for a campfire. We lived in an orange tent under spruce trees for a few nights and my three year old fell asleep easily listening to Jerry Muskrat try to save the Smiling Pool and the baby's face was pale and round and cool and moon-like in the little snowsuit she slept in. During the day, we drove together in a rented mini-van, stopping at roadside farm markets and unpacking sandwiches from the cooler in the back.

Earlier this summer, my neighbour left a stack of books — six or seven at least, paperbacks, bestsellers — just inside the screen door at the back of our house. I'm on the last one. Despite the heat, summer's nearly over.

Online I've been reading Lily Stockman's dispatches for Vogue. "During the day I painted and tuned out the pornographers and set my sights on MFA programs, and at night I read Joan Didion and wondered, as I lay awake in the dark, if the man I loved would be killed in combat. Portrait of a marriage in wartime." Which, come to think of it, seem to be updated as often as this blog. So there.

it is spring

It is spring. It is spring now, and I accept that. I believe it, really and truly, despite the fact that it was only 5 degrees above freezing on Sunday.

Still, we went to the donkey sanctuary. My love loves him some donkeys, so we went on his birthday. A donkey sanctuary is a place for sad donkeys, and we listened and nodded as volunteers told their stories, and we walked under low cloud with a cold wind, and we drove home listening to the end of the basketball game. We lost in the last few seconds.

Jasper wakes in the morning, nurses, rolls off the bed, slides down the stairs, eats a few bites of banana and slips his pajama-footed feet into his rubber boots. I try to keep up, begging him to wait and to put on a hat and eventually I end up outside at dawn, wearing my winter coat over pajamas, listening to the birds.

I am reading Love Medicine before bed, and I am experiencing nostalgia for the present. I am jealous of myself because I know this will be my only opportunity to read this book for the first time. I try to savour it, but I find myself racing on. I go to bed every night with a headache from holding my breath.

It is spring, and I know it because the first of the seeds I've planted are starting to uncurl into twin leaflets. We'll have salad someday soon.

This winter's rabbit.

Last summer's rabbit (the one that ate all of my kale, my broccoli, my cauliflower, chewed luscious greens into tiny, hard stems; the one that I suspected was coming under the neighbour's fence and which I might have even thrown a pebble at to scare away — had one been handy), the very same rabbit, has been leaving tell-tale tracks in the overnight snow.

This morning, it appeared, coming through the drifts between the houses, and stopped at the bush with the red berries. I put down the dish I was washing and called my son and held him in my arms while we watched the bunny.

capturing december 1: my view today

vernal equinox

I love this time of year.

a little something

 

I have no idea what this is or where it came from. I found it in my backyard, and I'm prepared to accept it as a gift.

and i thought only boring people got bored

Living every week like it's Shark Week over here. 

late summer

I'll always get more than I could put into it. 

The vines are creeping into the mown grass; the purple eggplant clings to the edge of the tomatoes; the lavender stretches its frail limbs, waving; the patchouli catches the breeze. 

Time to eat up, put up, fill up, before the coolness in the air changes everything all over again. 

whoever you are, I have always depended upon the kindness of strangers

There's something to be learned from the generosity of basil. Just one day after a brutal pillaging, it's springing new leaves in all the right places, greener than ever and whispering "I hope you enjoyed your pesto."

Like a herbaceous Blanche DuBois, over here.