Everywhere I walk in the dry grass around the place throngs of locusts leap out with dry clicks and whirrs. Their voracity finally has outpaced many new plants' ability to put forth new foliage and recover. The potatoes are goners. Several of my giant marigolds are just sticks. I discovered today with sorrow the skeletonized hops leaves. A lesson: If you can't get plants in the ground sufficiently early that they can become robust enough to survive the trials of summer, then don't bother. Perhaps fewer than half a dozen of the two dozen plants I put out a couple of weeks ago will survive, and so feebly they are unlikely to persist through winter. The grapevines are untouched, and the artemisias and bee balms and anything fuzzy (lamb's ears, dittany, culinary sage). It's all very sad.

Let's see. That's two consecutive depressing paragraphs--one ending with "moldy" and the next with "sad." Can I generate a third? My brother's very occasional bad behavior--pulling out his hair, usually associated with middle-of-the-night thunderstorms or howling wind--has become a habit. As the two most recent bald patches on the back of his head fill in, I relax, thinking I've finally gotten him to understand why this is a bad thing to do to himself. Then this afternoon I discover that he's begun pulling out his eyebrows. Either that or he had a very unsteady session with the electric razor this morning. In addition, he started his TV hour this evening watching Star Trek: Mirror, Mirror for the 17th consecutive day. We are not on good terms at the moment.

It's very hot. We are stuck in one spot. We love each other a lot. A lot. But the atmosphere is starting to turn, as milk does past its expiration code. Do you know of a philanthropic organization that provides respite vacations for impoverished middle-aged siblings such as we?

I've heard you can harvest and dry locusts and grind them for flour.

Yes, a vacation.
6:00:40 PM    comment []  

I glance, just briefly, at the sky. It is so clear, its planets and galaxies reeling so brightly and so near, that it seems like the face of a descending hammer. The universe is altogether too vast for me to cope with on my own just now.

When I go back in, I release the dogs, and then go about shutting the house down for the night. When I let them in again, Greta comes in, too.

Personal Annals of Olfaction: The first time I called for the dogs, only Sally came in. I did some computering while I waited for Apple to turn up. Then I noticed Sally standing at the open window sniffing and sniffing a certain draft of air with great intensity. I walked over and stood near her and sniffed here and there around the screen. Nothing. So I leaned over near where she had her snout pointed. A cold freshet just there carried in it a faint but sharp and unexpected sensation, something I recognized--chemicals a mammal will release from a certain gland when it is sufficiently terrorized, and a hint of fresh blood. The scents, to my senses, were barely there, but they were unmistakable.

I was shocked. I've been trying to learn to smell what the creatures around me smell when I see them suddenly alert and sniffing the air from a definite direction. This was my second or third (supposed) success. It can be done, then.
11:32:34 AM    comment []