The world’s as the world is

Two tropical weather systems in as many weeks have left everything sodden. Even the daddy longlegs, who don't normally enter the house, have moved inside to get away from the wet. The grass squelches when I walk on it, which I take as a sign that I should not walk on it. Last week the grounds crew that maintains the lawns around my office tried to cut the grass between rains and succeeded mainly in leaving riding mower-sized ruts in the zoysia.

So it really doesn't matter how much I need or want to get outside to rake and weed, I must wait until we dry out a bit.

September Bloom Day is on Thursday and I do have a few things blooming now. Nothing very impressive, though not for want of effort on my part in planning for months other than April, May, and June. It's just that the poet was so very very right when he remarked that the best laid plans gang aft a'gley.

But autumn is coming, and with it good times to plant more perennials. The tomatoes and melons at the farmers' market are disappearing, replaced by sweet potatoes and winter squashes.¹ Football is back. I am interested in yarn again, and even have a couple new finished projects. More on those Friday.

¹ Corn has been finished for several weeks now. In this area, high season for corn on the cob is July and early August, and by September it is over. The crab shack tossed two ears of corn in with the dozen mediums we got yesterday; they tasted like paste and must have been shipped in from someplace out of state. I wish the (mostly New York-based) food writers who blithely push corn recipes in September, claiming we should 'savour late summer's bounty' with them, would hush up, or write about peaches, or something.

Robinson Jeffers