The Last Summer Sunday

So it is: the last Sunday of summer 2020; autumn equinox is September 22. Did I have a good summer? I did my best, like everyone else, and for the first time in life ate garlic any darn time I pleased. On October 1, I have lived here 19 consecutive years, not counting the 14 months' sublet in 1998-99. Filled the hummingbird feeders to ensure the birds won't leave me. (Smile; of course they must leave, always in September's final week.) But hickory nuts began falling and exploding on the roof weeks ago, and a monarch butterfly sat on a coneflower here on August 1 -- rather early for signs of autumn. 

On the walk today, luxuriated in all the greenery, noticing, compiling a mental keepsake. Missouri goes autumn overnight. Maybe a week from now it'll be golden rather than green.

Interior signs of autumn: Scramble out to get a flu shot. Wink at the good-looking pharmacist. Unbox the "happy lamp" and use it as lighting at Zoom meetings, something unheard-of a year ago. Ordered all new winter clothes, i.e. long-sleeved silk undershirts, hooded sweatshirts, and pants with fleece interiors; new coat, socks and sneakers; and the fresh flannel pajamas ought to arrive soon. One last wash and folding of the summer sheets before exchanging them for flannel. Huge dinner plates of chili spaghetti and excessive emotions about hot drinks (I love my coffee, but didn't know my coffee loved me.)

Some folks don't like autumn, but at the equinox it's only 90 days until the solstice, and when I was in my 20s and complaining, a fellow worker in his 60s said, "Don't wish your life away."

August Night, September Morning

About three days ago a stony chill manifested in the atmosphere, day and night, regardless of temperature. It introduces the change of seasons, and normally it arrives around September 20, when summer is truly technically over. That should be the significant date in the "living out here" calendar, but it's August 31, turning at midnight with the flip of a page into September, that erects a whole new defensive rather than celebratory mindset. What kind of winter is coming? How to prepare? What didn't I do this summer that needs doing? (Say "Rabbits, rabbits, rabbits" at midnight for luck.)

This is Late Summer. It won't be autumn until September 21. Yet I've begun having soup at every meal, stockpiling what I "feel" is enough coffee and examined the fleece bathrobe to see if one more year might be wangled out of it. Trees in the understory are faintly yellowing. I don't want to be this way. (And in December, in winter's grip, I always light the firebowl and think, "This isn't so bad after all!") Several work projects require other people to make the next move and I'm waiting. I've waited for a couple of years on some of them. Wish progress were as constant as the changing phases of the moon. Here's the August 2019 full moon. May it be so: September 2019 will be greatest month of our lives.

Animals Know What's Best

All animals know and go for the best part of anything: Here's a daddy long legs enthroned and lounging in the most elegant and fragrant of palaces, the crown of my basil plant, not caring if the plant is not native and scrawny because, I think, I transplanted the young plant into too big a pot, hoping for a big lush green bushy grant of basil. But I love it anyway and am glad a creature has found and appreciates it and feels safe there; there are not enough leaves on the plant for the spider to worry about the risk of becoming pesto.

A young cedar plant, being invasive, picks the choicest spot for its growth an inch in front of a healthy deciduous tree, such as an oak, with the goal of overshadowing it and appropriating all its nutrients, not caring that it's being rude and the other tree was there first; it's just nature.

I was taught to expect or take second-best and leave the absolute best for somebody else -- let them have the best bedroom, best part of the chicken, or shower first and get the hot water, etc. So glad I live where wild animals are teaching me the proper attitude, and there's no pressure to compromise.

Happy Labor Day!

The High Sign

Final days of August, the dog days, are always hot, humid and unnerving -- what, summer is almost over? I lie low, work as little as possible, fix and serve summery lunches on the screened porch: here a favorite salad of shrimp, grapefruit and avocado with mustard-tanged dressing, and a glass of prosecco (sparkling dry wine, not quite champagne) to pay myself for being a good human.

Spooner's frozen custard, located up a steep driveway on a hilltop, is our local version of the famous St. Louis frozen custard called Ted Drewes'. My favorite sundae is called the "109-er" after the highway. One recent evening I went there. I am always alone. No one else is. This way I can concentrate on my ice cream. I order at the window, sit on one of the perforated metal benches and wait in the blanket-warm purple twilight until my sundae is ready and my name is called. Meantime I gaze at the green hills in the distance and up at the stars, slowly emerging like an understanding, and perhaps the moon, and listen to the passing trains. I look for the rabbit in the moon. Summer food, savoring summer -- is there anything better? Can it be late summer already? This August marks my 30th year in Missouri.

The 50-Year Vacation

Ordered some old books and from one of them fell a glassine bag of color negatives: 12 images in all, taken with a 2-1/4-inch camera, a type now extinct, already passe back when in college I bought a used one. These photos don't have the date anywhere, nor does the envelope, but they document someone's beach vacation in a place where there are palm trees (shown in another negative). I hope they had a wonderful time and remember their vacation fondly. In these delicate negatives it's lasted half a century.

Do resorts still have beach cots? Nowadays everyone lies on towels on the sand.

The books were from the late 1950s. Not only were there negatives, but tucked between other pages were 2 report cards, one from 1957-58 and one from 1961-62. I love these kinds of strange treats. Eye-openers for sure. More about them later.

A Fresh Tent

This is a Kelty "Grand Mesa" two-person tent, and I also bought the footprint. Tonight I sleep in it for the first time and anticipate through the screens the wonders of the night sky and creatures sniffing about, and, in this hot weather, an incredibly beautiful, steamy full hour of dawn, all orange and marbled with fog. Think I'll spend the weekend in it.

This is also the first time I set up the tent myself; the very first was in midsummer with my friend Marsha demonstrating the amazingly simple clip-on strategy used on tents now in place of the "sleeve" strategy of my old green-and-mustard dome tent that made erecting it rather like a session of tae kwon do.

I didn't sleep outside at any time last year, and regretted it. Time on earth -- directly on the earth and beneath the night sky -- is important; you live each night only once. There's a foam pad in there and my 40-degree sleeping bag and little pillow and a light soft blanket that in the chilly pre-dawn hours I will love feeling against my neck and chin. See you in the morning.

A Companionable Spider

All summer I welcome daddy-long-legs into the bathroom; they arrive even without a welcome, so why not. This orange-brown one, my companion for several days now, first hung out in the plastic container I keep combs and hair products in; then it spent an evening on the sink’s edge, and leg by leg it poled away when I came in to brush my teeth. Here it’s enjoying a bath towel. It seems to like exploring the variety of bathroom surfaces and landscapes—like a European tour, except for spiders. I carefully dried my hands on this towel’s edge so it could keep its footing. It’s so companionable now that it doesn’t flee. What does it think of the giant being who enters and brightens the bathroom (a room with no windows) at intervals, steams it to a comfortable humidity, and leaves it in peace?

I hear many folks bemoaning the end of summer, but summer lasts until my summer companions are gone.

A Sunrise Like a Moonrise

Last night had a nightmare, very rare for me. This morning woke up in light of a glassy moonstone grey as I hadn't seen in a while, and suddenly my chemistry changed. From the kitchen, which faces east, I saw the sun struggling upward though shrouds of purple and gunmetal gray, looking more like a moonrise, and for a moment I was disoriented: day or night? No; it's summer becoming fall, heading toward the one equinox I could do without. No one hangs onto the final days of summer as I do, begging them, please do not take my basil and hummingbirds and "honor" vegetable stands. But the morning didn't listen and whisked me along as the earth shifts on its axis, tilts away from the sun, giving me no choice except acceptance. It does, however, provide coffee to lift one's spirits.

Hard Up, Are Ya?

When it got dark I heard heavy thuds and thunks on my roof. My hair stood on end. I locked the doors, hunkered down, and prepared to murder somebody.

In the morning I go outside and find a hummingbird feeder has been knocked off its hook. It's glass and fortunately hasn't broken. So I cook up new nectar, refill it and hang it.

After dark again, thud, thunk--sounding just like a man wearing heavy boots, walking on my roof. He will be sorry he did that, I vow. Just let him show his face.

Next morning one of my hummingbird feeders is missing. I look everywhere. It's bright red; it shouldn't be hard to find. But it's nowhere to be found! Those things are expensive! And the others are askew and empty! I filled them only yesterday!

In the early evening, while there's enough light to see, I'm on my porch and hear thunk, thunk, and to my surprise I see not five feet from my face the upside-down top half of a raccoon curled over my gutter, batting at and molesting one of the two remaining hummingbird feeders. So greedy it will try to steal 4:1 diluted sugar water? That's hard up! I grab the broom and chase it while saying bad words, and take the feeders into the house.

Next morning I walk to the mailbox in my pajamas and walking uphill I see a red object on my roof. It's my missing nectar feeder! Upright no less! Now to find a monitor who will watch me while I go up on a ladder and get it.

Everywhere, Endless, and Changing

I want so much to share the beauty I see, living out here--daily, my cup overflows. In the city, I got beauty at the museum or in individual plants or trees, and only in glimpses, so I moved and I stay so I can feast on the beauty that is everywhere and endless and changing. On my gravestone please write, "She loved beauty."  Or maybe this, from a North Country British gravestone:

The wonder of the world,
The beauty and the power,
The shapes of things,
Their colours, lights and shades,
These I saw.
Look ye also while life lasts.

(That wasn't written by a Londoner.)

Woke early this late August morning with a head cold returned in full force (darn, but that's life; I'll take it) and peeked outside and the sun was just rising, but I saw turkeys at the meadow's edge, and although it's not a bird-book picture of a turkey, the above photo is what I actually saw. And loved it.

Harvest

Garden vegetables get smaller as the hours of sunlight diminish now. You know how the girth of August tomatoes is much less, maybe half, of July's. These August jalapenos, small but fully formed, easily detached from the mother plant, and that meant, "Harvest Me." These little emerald beauties are hot as #&!*@!!#. I can never predict how hot a homegrown hot pepper will be.

The word "harvest" comes from Anglo-Saxon and is related to the German "Herbst," meaning "autumn." I am not ready for autumn but harvest is fine by me. It's also guaranteed in one of the most beautiful sentences in the English language: "While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease."

All Play and No Work

Coming round a bend from walking in a park in town I saw this dramatic huge air balloon collapsing in the baseball field. Turns out a sudden course change required the captain to land somewhere open and flat, along with 8 passengers he referred to as "1800 pounds of passengers," and I ran over to ogle it like everybody else, especially tons of kids comin' outa nowhere. After the balloon drooped to the ground it still had air in it so the captain recruited the kids to roll on it end to end to press all the air out, and they sure enjoyed that and of course I have video (34 seconds) of kids rolling on it and screamin' with joy on a summer evening in Missouri. And the captain, in the red shirt, said it was much easier than just him doing it.
The travel basket looked very small for 8 people and a third of it was taken up by 4 tanks of propane fuel, 400 lbs each. After the kids deflated the balloon, two adults folded it and the captain called a truck to pick up the basket and passengers. Golly, all this excitement and novelty and it was only the second day of my annual "All Play and No Work" week. I'd just been fishing with my bff Carmel and then to a church ice-cream social with Ace and came to the park to walk it off, and now this.

Joys of the Rural Mailbox

Having a rural mailbox was the deciding factor in me moving to the country 10 years ago. It's a Pandora's box of joy and mystery. Six days a week someone puts surprises in it. Never know what I'll get. Oh, some items aren't fun, but golly, I've unlatched my box--so much better than those mean little slots in the city--to find checks, postcards, packages, magazines, personal letters...and they just keep a-coming. Whether I'm good or bad, I get mail just the same. Everyone gets mail. It is a type of unconditional love. I love my mailbox as others love a pet. I have walked downhill to it in steaming hot sun, or in starlight, or heavy snow, either to pick up mail or-- this is really neat--put mail INTO my box, up the little red flag and have it taken away! Ten years later, I have not gotten over how great this is, and the only extra I could ever want is a mailing address that says "Rural Route," or, better, "Star Route." Maybe someday.

Yes, these boxes pose challenges. I have to step into the road to get my mail. Others have it worse and have to actually cross the road to their boxes. For me it's a long walk down and a steep one back up. Sometimes, if I've put the flag up, I use binoculars to check it. Mail gets baked, or soaked if the boxes rust or leak, or the latch gets iced shut or fails and the box hangs open like a mouth right on the highway where anybody could reach in (and sometimes, desperate people do), or kids in cars bash them with baseball bats. But I LOVE my mailbox. When the flag won't stay up I repair it (with duct tape). When it's warped I hammer it back into shape. I love all rural mailboxes. But my own I love with a passion that is unlike any other. Mine used to have morning glories twining up its post; divine; after 2002 and the cliff-blasting and road widening, no more. Still I love it just as much. Photo is of a box down the road with natural, native Tickseed Sunflower (Bidens aristosa) growing up on it right now. Prettier than mine. But so what.

Daddy's in Love

Looked to me like this daddy-long-legs is having a loving moment with the scrub brush that has all those marvelous bright green legs. These two seem very very cozy, if you know what I mean...But I'm not one to gossip, so you didn't hear it from ME... The scrub brush later told the potato scrubber that they were just friends...but you know how scrub brushes are; when was the last time one of them told you the truth? Bless their hearts.

The Colors of Things To Come

Last night the local TV weatherman gave his "next three months" forecast: It'll be dry as dust, will frost in October and, he actually said this twice, might snow before the end of that month. November the pits also. But I knew anyway that when August comes the party of summer is pretty much over. "August is a September month," poet Sylvia Plath wrote in her diary. She preferred July. I prefer June. May is better. Anyway, can't do anything about it except admire the previews of fall colors I currently see here and there among the jungly greenery. The cliff is typical geology for this area.

Smiles on a Summer Night

The July just past was the fourth-hottest July on record in this area, and the hottest since 1936, and August is the same, and this is God's way of telling the people of Missouri to enjoy the hot darkness and slurp up icy things before bedtime. There's something wonderful about neon lights in August advertising icy stuff. The SnoBiz stand, a tiny six feet wide and 12 feet long, is shuttered all winter behind the grocery store and so nondescript I don't even see it, but it comes alive with fun lights and people on summer nights, and finally -- because life is too short to be such a hardass as to lecture myself, "I don't need sweet icy stuff on an August night" -- stopped in about 10 p.m. when it was still 85 degrees, and bought a lemon-meringue ice (a staff recommendation) just so I could take a photo.

It was incredibly tasty for a cup of shaved ice and placated my inner seven-year old who vowed that after she got her own purse and money and could stay up past 8:30 she wouldn't ever pass up an ice cream store, ice-cream truck, ice-cream sandwich, slurpee, or sno-cone. (Wasn't any frozen yogurt in those days. In Harvard Square, in Cambridge, Mass., is a plaque honoring the place that the first frozen yogurt was made and sold in 1971.)

Everything's Good This Time of Year

Please stop in at your local farmer's market or fruit and vegetable stand because this time of year you cannot go wrong. If it grows in your locale, it's at its peak. So what if it's 100 degrees. I sorted through the Missouri tomatoes for the squat-looking Big Beefs and Brandywines, bought the sweetest local corn (had it for lunch along with my own baked steak fries; now that's divine) and local nectarines, a local eggplant with such lovely purple cheeks I want to kiss it, some zucchini and green beans, and I admired the plums, famously sweet Vidalia onions ("You only cry when they are gone"), brand-new baby potatoes both red and Yukon, and the avalanche of melons.

Andy's is in House Springs, also called House Sprangs, and operates 11 hours a day in summer, like many such businesses. I asked the beautiful lady who waited on me (pictured) if she was the owner. She said she was the Owner's Wof.

This is my idea of heaven.

Cloudburst

On an August afternoon, when it'd been over 90 degrees every day for a solid month, and was pushing 100, it rained for a solid fifteen minutes, then it rained for another fifteen minutes, hard, with the sun shining. Dodging the huge raindrops I ran outside seeking a rainbow, but didn't see any. But from my porch, where I and the camera could stay dry, I saw my birdbath and bird feeder bathed in sun and rain.

August Cornfield

The ears ripen in late summer
And come on with a conquering laughter,
Come on with a high and conquering laughter.

The long-tailed blackbirds are hoarse.
One of the smaller blackbirds chitters on a stalk
And a spot of red is on its shoulder
And I never heard its name in my life.

Some of the ears are bursting.
A white juice works inside.
Cornsilk creeps in the end and dangles in the wind.
Always—I never knew it any other way—
The wind and the corn talk things over together.
And the rain and the corn and the sun and the corn
Talk things over together.
       (excerpt from "Laughing Corn," poem by Carl Sandburg.)