Dry

I believe I took the front windows off right around Memorial Day. I put them on, I think, the day after I took this photo, June 10th, but took them off again and haven't put them back on. If the top wasn't splitting along some seams, I'd have the top down.

It's dry, so very dry here. It's not quite the tinderbox that Colorado, Utah and New Mexico are but there was a report that fires and grills were going to be banned in forest preserves beginning this weekend. There will be no grilling for that family picnic for which you reserved your space back in February, on the first day you could reserve a space. It's just too dry. There is also talk that fireworks shows are in danger of being cancelled. The only "safe" place would be over the lake and I don't think the city of Chicago is doing fireworks at the end of Taste of Chicago anymore. I know that got axed last year in a budget cutting move. Navy Pier always does fireworks on July 4th, again off barges on the lake, so that may be the one place to see rocket's red glare.

It's to be 90 today and 104 tomorrow. I've had the windows open and the AC off the past 2 days. It was lovely this morning and had this been a weekend, I would have kept the windows open until around noon, when the heat begins to build. It will make the AC work less if it's cool inside. I closed up the house, checked to make sure the AC was set for 80 and came to the office where it was 68 in my section. I had to run my portable heater for a bit. The rest of the office is nice. My office is a refrigerator.

Weather people are likening this to the drought of 1988. In August of that year, we had something like 15 straight days of 100+ temperatures. I had a garden back then and I remember water rationing and trying to get the garden adequately watered on the days we could. Our ancient AC unit gave out on day number 10. The service man who came after the heat broke said the freon just gave out. We bought a window fan for the north window and set up other fans to suck the hot air through the house. We covered all the west and south windows to reflect the sun.

Funny how you get dependent upon the cooling ability of central air conditioning. I didn't have that growing up on the farm. I remember nights spent splayed across the bed wishing for any kind of breeze and moving every 10 minutes when your body heat had made the spot you were lying in warm. I can hear the buzzing of the insects from those hot summer afternoons spent lounging in the living room or on the front porch. I also remember Kool-Aid pops and Dad standing on the porch looking at the garden. "This hot weather is good for my tomatoes," he'd say. I remember walking to the corn fields after lunch and sitting under the canopy of stalks, the ground and air in the rows about 10 degrees cooler. You could hear the corn growing and the smell, oh the smell of the earth is a smell I love.

I also love the smell of the earth and the air after a heavy rain born of the clash between hot and cold. The ground almost sizzles when the first line of water hits. I remember a few times being in town and watching the steam rise off pavement and sidewalk after a summer rain during a heat wave. The smell of water and earth is intoxicating.

I'm watering my deck flowers but not the yard. I think watering a lawn is silly and a waste of water. It will return to green once the rains come. If it doesn't, reseed. Put in something that goes dormant in these hot Midwest summers, something that you don't have to water. I should wash the Jeep this weekend. That ALWAYS brings rain, right?

Beverage:  Raspberry Earl tea

Deb

Close to a Square

On day 12 of stitching, I can see the end of the square. I'd have done more except I couldn't get home. I stopped for gas and, as I was pulling up to my street, there were police and fire vehicles blocking the street. A less-than-helpful police officer told me I had to park and walk to my house. Further review showed that the emergency vehicles were not down by my drive so I could come from the north and pull in, but it took 15 minutes of trying to convince the police officer, even when I handed him my driver's license, that I did, in fact, live on the block and could get home. 

Neighbors are having their hardwood floors redone. The company doing the refinishing parked something by the side of their driveway. It ignited a tree between two lots. I guess flames shot straight up the tree. There is smoke damage to the house not having their floors redone. Had I not needed gas on the way home, I am told I would have seen the fire shoot up the tree. Thanks but some things I don't need to witness. So, that delayed me from stitching. 

Still, I'll have the square finished by week's end. Then on to the interior. I don't think I'll make my deadline for the completed item, but it will be close. 

Beverage:  Cranberry Pomegranate Juice

Deb

I miss the smell of fall.

I came home tonight during a gloriously sunny fall afternoon. After the heavy rains of Thursday through Saturday, there are almost no leaves left on the trees. The air is crisp as a fresh picked apple (Memo: Whole Foods for a bag of apples for sauce.) and the dried leaves stuck to my shoes have kept Mija occupied chasing them around the house until they disintegrate. This week's task is to dust the floors.

On the gentle breeze, I caught a whiff, just a few molecules of a scent, the scent of burning leaves.

Oh how I miss that.

At this time of the year, in the 1980's, I would rake all the leaves from the front around to the back and pile them on top of the area where the peonies were. Then the leaves and the dried peony stalks would be torched one afternoon when the air was still and any smoke went up and not sideways. Not only did this remove the leaves from the yard, but peonies benefit from the ash and to have those dried stalks burned. It cleanses the soil around them.

I know those with asthma and other breathing disorders hated this time of year, loathed it. That was the main reason given for banning the practice of burning leaves. I think another part was the one homeowner on the block who piled them up, lit them and then went inside on a Sunday with a stiff 30 mph wind from the south to sit in his easy chair with his Budweiser and watch the Bears. It was only when the fire trucks showed up that he suspected there might, perhaps, be a problem.

Controlled burns are the sustenance for prairie soils in any managed acreage. These usually occur in the spring and there is huge public notice along with protests that people with breathing problems can't go outside. I'm one of those people with allergies. On purpose standing downwind of any fire is, at best, stupid of me and, at worst, a recipe for coughing fits and breathing problems for the next two days. So I'm not altogether unsympathetic to that problem.

But, I miss the smell. I miss the returning of the leaves to the earth. I miss how the peonies looked the next year, glorious masses of pink blooms on plants 3 feet high. The bed is overrun with garbage plants now and I'm not even sure there are peonies growing there anymore. They were so diseased the last time I actually saw them, big brown splotches on the leaves and malformed flower heads. I know it's because the ground isn't sterilized from fire. Remedies were to use chemicals and that's worse than doing nothing.

So, for an instant tonight, I was transported back in time, to a place where a fast burning supervised leaf fire wasn't a criminal offense, where recycling meant returning the leaves to the soil, not just mulching them and hoping they decompose. I miss sticking marshmallows on the end of a stick and making smoky flavored s'mores.

There just isn't anything that compares to the smell and sight of a leaf fire. Nothing.

Beverage: Assam tea

Deb