daily haiku
grass is tinder dry
some fires in the area
leaves begin to fall
Little rain for nearly two months and the countryside is in its usual time of waiting for moisture. Rain in the next few weeks if we are lucky, or October snow if we're not. I am forced to use the methane water to keep my plants alive - I use the bare minimum and hope that winter snow washes away the sodium salts. Plants look tired and "stalky" especially the mint that is stubbornly refusing to bloom. Intead of mint, the bees are clustering around the spikes of purple russian sage. I caught sight of them after the last rain, glued to the blossoms, which made me think they cannot fly when their wings get wet? I had to poke one to find out if it was alive - it was - it did not fly.
Grasshoppers are eating anything with moisture, and although we do not have a lot of them there are holes in the petals of the petunias that show they are hungry as ever. I drove to Ashland a few times where they have a plague of them and I could hear pings and pops as they hit the front of the car. I hate that. They form a cement-like layer which takes ages to remove in the car wash.
The cottonwood is losing early dried leaves and my energy is split on whether to rake now and later, or wait til they are all down. My perfectionism votes for the first option, my laziness the second! Neither option has won as yet.
As for me, approaching my 70th birthday, I notice dry skin on my arms that look like my mothers' when she was older. Crepey and creepy in my opinion. I fight wrinkles with Lancome, but the beastley little skin-valleys are slowly winning. I am in the fall of my life raking over the old years and petrified of the new ones; but I can chose to enjoy today - it's all we have anyway.
