Notice when and where we are.
We are at a tipping point in the seasons.
College classmate Jane Collins lives in Medford, Massachusetts, which like my farm outside Medford, Oregon is at latitude 42.4 degrees north of the equator. The climate zones are different, but the angle of the sun is the same. She wrote a reverie about this moment in the annual seasons and in the lives of people born in the postwar baby boom of 1949 and 1950.
She publishes her essays and poems at https://alicet4.com.
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| Jane Collins: summer garden |
Guest Post by Jane Collins.
The days are getting short. The sun doesn’t feel so warm, when it shines. Weeds have grown up in the garden. Nobody cares. They won’t stop the last tomatoes from ripening.
Parts of the plants have turned brown and limp. But if you pull one up, thinking it’s dead, you might be surprised by a good-sized fruit at the end of the dry stalk. So you leave the garden looking raggedy, overgrown, with brown among the living green. There are still treasures in it.
Here and there is a small yellow flower or two. The bees know where. The sunflower bushes are swarming with bees, and some butterflies, wasps, and moths. Creatures are still finding nourishment here.
I have lost some old friends recently. One died after a long illness. One is moving to be near family, now that she needs people to check in on her. One has been hospitalized several times; she has to have another operation and she’s terrified. The oldest of all of them is doing well but worries about becoming a burden to her daughter. I’ve always been in good health, but lately, something is going on with my heart.
Are we all dry stalks, then? Or is there still some juice in these old growths?
We live through more rains, more wind and clouds, more sunshine. We hope for a late harvest.
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Scenes from my farm, yesterday.
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| The spent sunflowers |
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| Watermelons, culled in the field |
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| The mature grape plants in full harvest |
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| Young grapes, still putting on leafy growth |
4 comments:
A 60-yr-old friend of mine was obsessed with what he perceived as the dire threats to health posed by electro-magnetic fields and ‘chemtrails’ (aircraft contrails). He was about 50 lbs. overweight, and I pointed out that diet and exercise have a far greater effect on our quality of life. He died suddenly one night, presumably of a heart attack.
At this point in our lives, we’re reaping the result of a lifetime of lifestyle choices. The good news is, there’s no age at which we wouldn’t feel better by dropping some bad habits and acquiring good ones.
Autumn Leaves by Cannonball Adderly, Miles Davis, etc.
click
text link for the paranoid: 😱😀
https://youtu.be/CpB7-8SGlJ0?si=NConNUuNYgi7CXjK
SWEET! Anything with Miles :)
“Are we all dry stalks, then? Or is there still some juice in these old growths?
We live through more rains, more wind and clouds, more sunshine. We hope for a late harvest.”
Lovely
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