07.18.17

It feels like mid-summer.  My sister wrote today, “it will be August before you know it.”  We’ve had a reprieve from the heat wave, but the air is so dry, and there is no rain in sight, forever.   Forest fires dot the state, and British Columbia fires are raging.  There is an ominous foreshadowing, even with bright blue skies overhead.  The deer are making attacks on my geraniums and I’ve covered them with netting to see if they can at least make it to mid-August.  I watch the mama deer and her little Bambi walk down the grass each morning, and know I should shout out the door to them, but, really, it’s just not in me.  I finally had to give up on the flowers in the window box over the garage, even after Rita made so many trips down here to water them while we were on Whidbey Island.  There was just so much heat, and somehow the water wasn’t draining from the window box, and it smelled terrible when I tried to trim the plants, and, in frustration, I threw the three pots down to the driveway below, smashing them, and scattered dirt and dead flowers everywhere.  It was a mess to clean up, but quite therapeutic, actually.  I don’t know what that was all about, but I cleaned out the window box and there are new pots alive in there for the time being.  Something about mid-summer is just a little unsettling.  It’s like being on that amusement park ride where the car reaches the very top, and pauses for a brief moment, and you don’t know if you’re going to go over the apex or come back down to where you were.

I’ve been watching these little Johnny-jump-ups grow between the stones on the terrace, popping up where I drip water from the watering can, as I replenish the geranium pots.  I’ve been thinking that I’ll pick a few for the table when we have guests this week-end, and have made sure they get little dribbles of water.  Don trimmed today, and when I went out to water the pots this evening, oh dear, they had all been cut down, except for these little guys under the faucet.  The tiny tri-colored violas are referred to as “heartsease”, and seeing them in the kitchen window, so steadfast and faithful, they truly ease my heart on this lovely mid-summer evening, cool air now drifting down from the woods.