Hot Cloistered Summer

Our air conditioning at home is fixed (more accurately, a new unit was installed). And not one moment too soon: one heat waves breaks and another begins. The weather has been brutal for a solid month, maybe longer. I guess that’s what summer is now.

I just can’t be outside as much as I would like. I love long, bright days and do feel energized by the light; that energy gets sapped by the dangerous heat. For my own safety, I’m indoors cooling off more than I’d choose to be.

I’m living life at a different pace than I’m used to, but also paying deep attention in many cases.

The Garden

Mornings in my garden are precious. Before it gets oppressively hot, I can be there and do a little tending, a little harvesting.

Due to some mobility restrictions and health concerns, I’m not mowing the lawn as often. The back clover-lawn is beyond wild. It is feral. But some magical things are happening there, and I feel lucky to witness it.

Not-mowing means many volunteers have showed up: the yard is littered with tomatoes, milkweed, and zinnias I didn’t plant. I haven’t sowed seeds for these things myself since 2021, but they come back every year.

My chocolate cherry sunflowers get devoured by carpenter bees. I can’t blame the bees; they look delicious.

I’ve seen two monarch butterflies in my garden this week; both times, they flitted away too quickly for me to snap a photo. But that’s OK, I’m just so happy they stop here!

Summer Reading

I have wholly given myself over to Marilynne Robinson’s world of Gilead. I read and loved Gilead in 2011 and always meant to return, but something about this summer finally brought me back. (A friend is also reading these books and we text each other our reactions. It’s like a one-on-one book club, lucky me!!)

Driving to the weekly farmers market listening to Lila as an audiobook felt special every time. It made me think about home cooked meals, from casserole in a pan to a simple sandwich made with love.

It took me two hours to weed our driveway and front steps (all crabgrass with deep roots, not the kind of volunteer I welcome! I have blisters on my fingers and wrists from it!), but the time went by quickly because I listened to the first two hours of Robinson’s Jack on audiobook while I did so. Two strangers meeting in a cemetery at night, one because she was working on a poem in her head and lost track of time, one because he’s the errant son of a minister and can’t help but drift through life (though he also writes poetry), has me SMITTEN!

Movie Nights

When the sun sets, we’ve been queueing up some classic cinema at home. We’ve enjoyed Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams, the ramen-Western Tampopo, and the spy thriller Eye of the Needle. (Ever since Donald Sutherland passed, his movies are on the Recommended list of my public library app, and it is truly a joy to rewatch or discover his work for the first time!)

A truly magic watch has been the 1946 Jean Cocteau La Belle et la Bête. A strange and wonderful sight during a summer of endless heat waves that sometimes feel like they have made me a prisoner indoors.

In summer of 2003, I worked at a movie theatre concession stand and picked up some lifelong scars RE: the “butter” topping for movie theatre popcorn. I had to clean so much of that oily substance from counters and my own hands. The smell got in my hair and wouldn’t wash out. The salty toppings that patrons put on TOP of the popcorn grease would get stuck in my cuticles as I cleaned, and sting and sting.

After much perseverance, my spouse got me to try home-popped Amish kernels with very light sea salt as a topping. Maybe even a hint of actual butter-from-a-cow.

And … I enjoy it! It doesn’t reek or stain my clothes with grease or stink up the house the way theatres so often smell.

So that’s been a little treat as well.