August 21 - August 25 The World Begins to Quiet

2010-I hear on the radio this morning that the genetic code for wheat is 5x longer than the human.  What if plants are the superior beings?   I imagine a world where the humans act for the maintenance and betterment of the superior vegetable world and are rewarded with the harvest.  Perhaps that’s how it  once was.  Perhaps it is even true.  We imagine angels in human form but perhaps they look like flowers and seeds and waving grass. 
Why do people feel so much better out in nature?  Isn’t it the same way they feel in the presence of the so-called enlightened beings?  How would a person live if they took this to be true?
2011-I have been feeling a little differently this summer; something implacable/impersonal in nature. There is an element of fear in it and the sense of horror of nature torn from its cycles in the extremes we’ve been experiencing--extremes of water and of heat, an earthquake, and now the biggest hurricane in 70 years headed up the coast for us. Extremes of drought and heat in other places, hundred year floods; are humans responsible or is it just a bigger cycle?
The garden has been disappointing this year-very few potatoes and blighted, few tomatoes and half rotten, few peppers, more eggplants than ever (but that’s not saying much). The collards look good but even the kale is small and peaked. The cardoons barely grew-most of them died away. No fava to speak of but good broccoli and onions, lots of little pumpkins early and promising Brussels sprouts.  But even the patty pans are flowering but producing very little. I had been thinking about living from the garden but it is very humbling.
2012-My not very effective binoculars turn astonishing when I point them at the Pleiades. A blurry little spot resolves into a tight little clump of clearly visible stars.
2013-Even though it’s still August, the words of ‘September Song’ keep running through my head.  “Oh the days dwindle down to a precious few…” So I feel about summer’s end. In an attempt to slow down time, I am not listening to the radio (again) at all as I go about my daily activities, inviting time to hang heavy on my hands so as to feel every second. I immediately notice the constant background music of shrill cicada calls and that hummingbird buzzing actually sounds exactly like a cat’s purr. I think when all is over, I won’t regret anything left undone, but I will be sorry for every minute I was not fully present.

August 16 - August 20 Hot Nights End

2010-Each leaf, because of its particular shape and size reacts to the breezes in its own way.  I am watching the long slender nectarine leaves shiver in a breeze so slight it affects nothing else.  There is something in the movement that seems so alive, and isn’t it?  Perhaps it is the movement of the leaves that stirs the breeze.

Long nectarine leaves
Dance in the shivering breeze.
Which of those came first?

Leaves are falling already and there are spots of red and yellow amongst the trees; the result of a long drought as well as the first cold nights.  The ash I girdled in the spring to allow the blueberries more light is finally succumbing.  I am not proud of it though I deemed it necessary and it is raining down yellow leaves which I find beautiful.
2011-A year later the ash still lives, though it seems to lose its leaves earlier than other trees.  The blueberries were disappointing this year. Actually, everything seems muted.  There is much foliage because of the rain, but the fruits and flowers are less than usual.  I noticed yesterday the Queen Anne’s Lace is blooming almost alone which makes it easier to appreciate what a beautiful flower it is.
This close observation is slowly changing my point of view but with unexpected consequences. The grass must be mowed--but must it? Yesterday I steered that violent noisy machine over a patch of the very same lacy flowers I just claimed to love. Crickets and spiders living in the lawn scrambled out of the way. I think the lawn looks nice but does it really?  I commiserated with P when she complained of hearing the sounds of the cutting down of trees in her neighborhood, but isn’t mowing the same thing on a smaller scale?  I’m very attracted to Fukunawa’s theory of no plowing, no weeding, no fertilizing farming, I.e. following nature’s methods of growing.  Just look at healthy weeds! But to take the idea a step further, wouldn’t it be ideal to learn to live off what is already, naturally, growing?
2012-Again I am looking at the flourishing weeds and they call to me more than the cultivated plants. Perhaps this is a late summer phenomenon- I’m just tired of ‘making’ things grow.
2013-The meadow next door, waiting to be mowed, glows in rich golden colors; mellow late-season foliage and bee-swarmed goldenrod flowers.

August 11 - August 15 Stars and Sky

2010-The Perseid Meteor showers are August 12.  The fact that they fall on the same calendar day every year(within a day) seems to indicate something right about the way we mark time.  The days have begun to shorten by two and even three minutes and as we plummet towards fall the image of a pendulum comes to mind.  The low point is the fall equinox and then the pendulum sweeps through going upwards, gradually slowing down until it pauses at its high point, the winter solstice and then reverses direction, gaining speed again through the spring and then pausing at the alternate high point of summer.  Gravity becomes the force that prevents our living in either eternal winter or endless summer. These two images of time, the pendulum and the circling of my other essay together create a complexity that could not be more different than the straight linear movement usually conceived.   If I could mentally grasp the shape of a pendulum imposed over a spiral I think I would have the picture of time as it appears in four dimensions.
2012-A window opened in the cloudy night sky and I saw five meteors in about half an hour. One was spectacular-big and bright and trailing long. It left a red afterimage in my eyes.
2013-I woke up at 3 last night and was trying to decide whether to get up and go to the bathroom or just go back to sleep when I remembered that I wanted to see the meteors. A crisp hazeless, moonless night in mid-August is not that common and I was rewarded with the sixty or so promised each hour. Most were very short and many were faint and of course they always seem to appear where you’re not looking, at the periphery of your vision. But there were a handful of long bright ones leaving lasting images. What struck me most though was recognizing how speeded up even my intentionally slowed down and simplified life is compared with an activity like just lying there watching the sky. (Do people even do that anymore?) I was thinking that if you didn’t know better, you could believe the sky was a flat lid over us and the stars pinholes in that solid sheet letting the light from the ‘room’ beyond leak in. Then someone could teach you what people now believe is the reality and while your eyes would perceive exactly the same picture, your understanding would have completely  opened. That is what it must be like to shift into seeing four dimensions

August 6 - August 10 Nectarines

2010-
Shivering poplar,
And the ash keys soft clicking
Give the wind its voice.

Of the dozens of nectarines that formed on the tree, I have tasted not a single one. Most of them fell prey to a mold when they were little more than a pit with a skin.  The tree is abnormally dense, almost genetically mutated in appearance, and I’m thinking I should, in future, prune it back to open it up.  The few fruits that escaped the mold grew to ping pong ball size and fell victim to the resident chipmunk before they were even ripe.  He liked to bite into them and test for ripeness and then leave the ruined fruit lying on the deck. I finally picked the last four and brought them into the house to ripen but they seem to be just shriveling up. I bought the tree for its flowers and told myself that the fruit was just an unnecessary bonus, but to have seen so many form and to have lost every one is definitely frustrating.
The hummingbirds are in full force and charging at the feeder all day long.  It is too early for stoking up to migrate, it must be that the heat makes them extra thirsty.  With their constant buzzing, dive-bombing and u-shaped shrieking commotion, they seem the very essence of pure life force highly concentrated in that tiny feathered form.  Then every so often when one sits quietly on a branch tip, it seems unbelievable; and the stillness doesn’t last long.
Last night I saw two monarch butterflies mating in the grass. After several minutes, they clumsily flew up into the ash tree, still joined.  I hope it is a sign that their numbers will increase and that the warnings about their sudden population drop was just a misunderstanding of some natural cycle.  Though can anything now be said to be natural (if what I mean by that is ‘untouched by man‘)?
2011- I’ve since learned that the fruit needs to be thinned out on nectarines though this year none formed at all.  The monarchs do seem to be slowly building their numbers though I haven’t seen one bat. Can they disappear without the whole circus collapsing?
2012-No nectarines this year either though I blame it on the early frost just after they had flowered. I have had an insight into what an affirmation feels like when you take it inside and are not merely mouthing it. Very tentative though and it feels like I might lose it. An explosion of hummingbirds this year too-perhaps the babies.
2013- More nectarines than ever before this year, even after thinning them out. Waiting for them to ripen, I watch one after another fall prey to shriveling, rotting, molding or cracking. Will any survive to harvest?

August 1 - August 5 Un/Fruitful Humidity

2010-I am longingly anticipating a great rain as I write this, for this summer has been very dry.  The sky is darkish grey and the air is warm and wringing wet but, so far, nothing. (I am leaving the chaise cushion out hoping that will help things along.)  Last week I read Carson MacCullers’ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and yesterday took out her complete novels.  I am now in the middle of Reflections in a Golden Eye, a very different book but with the same sensibility.  Summer, for me, is the time to read these southern writers.  Experiencing the same humid languid heat as the characters makes it easy to enter those inverted but passionate emotional states, (no stretch for me anyway.)  She is so similar to Tennessee Williams-what was in the air then? This penetrating, oppressive humidity creates an emotional urgency that, too hot to act upon, cooks the nerves.  But something in the soup seems the very source of life, of biology.  Desire, in this case, for a cooling rain.
2011-Summer is passing, the fireflies were magnificent this year but are nearly gone. The summer rush of family visits did not allow time for writing-that, and with my car in the shop I had to take rides when I could get them and not keep my own schedule. This feels so far like a strange summer, I.e. not like summer at all. With the visiting, summer watering and gardening and the breakdown in infrastructure-car, septic/plumbing, lawnmower, I have not had time to feel. The heat and humidity, which I’ve always loved, feels like a burden; the shortening days barely register. I actually find myself looking forward to the quiet empty days of winter and their peaceful inwardness.  What a turnaround!  One more trip-to DC and Boston with F, out to Nantucket and then home-about ten days- and then hopefully a chance to savor the end of summer. I am looking forward to a last late summer trip to the shore with J and E.  Somehow I could barely take it in last month.  I hope it works out.

2013-The hummingbird feeder needs to be refilled every day. We are having hot sunny days and cool nights. The rain amounts are just right and the garden is producing prolifically. If there is any activity more satisfying than visiting the garden and making dinner from what one find’s there, I have not discovered it. (Except for making art.)