Ten o’clock and all is well here. We’re not sweltering any more; days are hot, but nights are mid 60s now, and the air is sweeeet. There was one night last week nobody anywhere slept very much (unless they had air conditioning set up already). That’s the kind of night where you keep a spray-mist bottle of water with you in the bed, aim a fan at yourself, and just keep spritzing until you cool off enough to fall asleep.
I look around at the small pockets of order I’ve created and I get a little wash of ecstasy. My favorite pants (restaurant supply, a print of grapevines and wine bottles) hanging on a hook on the bedroom door. A card Dar gave me. Books. Even the silly tube of A&D ointment that currently soothes my hands. All this comfort and familiarity within reach. It feels like when I took Lexapro for a little while, only less sleepy.
Karl and I power-watered the half of the garden that doesn’t have drip lines, last evening. Tonight I puttered in the raised bed, weeding and watering, picking three ripe strawberries (motherlode!) and a bunch of valmaine lettuce. I ate a small mountain of greens at dinner, the valmain and a lot of chard I picked yesterday. It seems like we wait so long for things to grow out and ripen, waiting, waiting in poverty, wanting, and then suddenly — Bounty!! And there’s so much we rush to the garden each night to keep up. I glance sideways at the lawn — oh, how tall the weeds have all grown already, needs mowing, no time tonight — and survey today’s progress in the little fertile rectangle. Don’t forget going in the gate with a flick of the latch these days. Marvellous! Everything looks good. I am surprised by the strawberries. So we will get a few this year after all. I dole out the water, pull some stray grass, greet Linus as he comes up meowing. He’s twitchy in that way he gets when he’s been hunting small, unlucky creatures. Glazed eyes, wide-mouthed meows, wanting to be near me. I’m glad he can’t tell me what he’s been up to, at the same time hopeful his scent will remain around the garden to deter voles. He wanders off to loll on the front stoop.
The perennials are fine. A couple are between blooms but they look all right. I deadhead the snapdragons. I’m not sure you’re supposed to do that, but they look all weary with the old dead blooms and the new ones coming in. The Carpathian Harebells have buds on them now. I notice I’ve planted them next to the loosestrife and both are white. I name that small rectangle the White Garden and make a mental note to expand it with other white flowers.
I haven’t done any bouquets in a few weeks so I go for the scissors and cut nasturtiums, marigolds, fragile wisps of lobelia, long lavender spikes. I fill three small vases and line them up on the dining room table. Finally I can get down to the business of making dinner.
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There are something like 250 tomato plants in the big garden. Many of them have little green fruit now. The Amish Paste are pear shaped; there is also some kind of yellow tomato that is squat and wide. They look like little green gourds so far. We have two or three summer squash, big enough for a family of gnomes to snack on, and as many tiny butternuts. Rose and I picked about 25 sugar snap peas and sauteed them last night with modified “Slap Yo’ Mama” seasoning and olive oil. She also made a slow cooker dish with chicken, hot salsa, chipotle peppers, black beans, kidney beans, corn, garlic, onions and cumin. It burned a hole right through all the world’s problems and made everything all right for a while.
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I had two dreams about dogs last week. In the first one I was supposed to be caring for the former owner (of this house)’s dog. It was being housed nearby or in the basement or I’m not sure where, but after a day or two I realized I hadn’t fed or watered it, or taken it out. What the hell! I was frantic, trying to figure out how to get to it. I thought it was in the basement but it was turning out I had to take a bus somewhere. I woke up then, thinking, how stupid to have asked me to take care of a dog across town.
We do know that his former dog was kept locked up a lot in the house, as evidenced by the residual effluvium here.
Anyway, Rose reminded me of a dream she’d had about a guinea pig she’d forgotten to take care of, that was near death. Someone told her she was the guinea pig; she needed to pay more attention to her own needs.
Last night I had the second dream about a large black/brown dog. This one was owned by my bandmates. I was watching it for the afternoon, and it was just wild, jumping up and biting my sleeve and pulling madly on it. I was trying to be firm and authoritative with it but it just wouldn’t calm down. I thought my sleeve would rip. Also its name was Josh, who is my sister’s boss. So I awoke wondering why in the world Rose’s boss would show up in my dream as a wild dog. But then I thought it was a metaphor for the band itself, being the “boss of me” for so long, dictating my schedule, my level of commitment, my freedom or lack thereof. And, finally, that I am the wild dog, needing for once to be the Josh of my own life, maybe theirs on paper (for now) but determined to get the attention of the “thinking me” and get my needs met. Good dog. Good dog.
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Snow is now helping me with the inventory stuff. Thank heaven Karl took her off the documentation project for a few days. She’s researching the new software to learn in-depth how it works and what it can do while I continue the grunt work of bar coding, Bills of Materials, sorting stock, and entering quantities. Big Boss comes back on Monday and he wants to see RESULTS. Karl told me of a Navy saying: Work it may; shine it must. In other words, make things look like a lot has been accomplished, for the boss that has never project-managed and has no idea of the details involved. Tomorrow we’ll put big signs on all the aisles and shelves in the warehouse, get rid of all the chaff (banker boxes of unused materials) that have built up in piles, and finish entering the last straggling components. All the items no longer in inventory have to be catalogued so that our accounting person can remove them from the old system. Tedious and pesky, but necessary and I’m really grateful that I now have help. Snow is excellent at research, and I haven’t had time to do it.
Okay; past my bedtime now.
Healer, Musician, Bookmaker, Poet 
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