After tomorrow, we can look ahead to an entire week where the temperature never climbs out of the eighties, according to my weather app. Lordy, what a treat that will be, carrying us into September in a joyful frame of mind and all that. This past Spring Robin and I looked ahead and decided not to do any gardening at all. The sorts of things we like to plant simply don’t do as well in the searing sort of summers we’ve experienced recently. It becomes almost a case of plant abuse to subject an innocent tomato plant to life in a reflector oven. The stunted fruit we’ve grown on wizened vines was sad to look at. A more skilled gardener than we are might have made something of it all, but this year we punted.
Moreover, we had new problems that arose and would claim the time and energies those tomato plants would have demanded . So our produce this year came 100% from City Market. Not a bad Plan B, as it turned out.
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Every single diet I ever fell off of was because of potatoes and gravy of some sort.
Dolly Parton
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The new study on chronic traumatic encephalopathy in football has made sooo many people uneasy. Parents and coaches can no longer say to themselves that the data just aren’t in, so go ahead and suit up, kid.
I have little sympathy for people who will let their children bash their brains about, claiming ignorance. I do have sympathy for the children, who deserve better from their guardians.
Here’s a bit of heresy. Football isn’t important. It’s a brute sport only marginally better than boxing in that regard, boxing being where the whole point of the activity is deliberately trying to damage the opponent’s central nervous system. We’ve built football into something like a national religion, a status it does not deserve. There are other ways to challenge ourselves in competitions that don’t involve this risk.
BTW, if you put your kid out there pretending that a new helmet will solve the problem, fageddaboudit. Parents and coaches should have the honesty to admit what they are doing, which is being active participants in the potential diminution of their children’s lives.
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God and I have a great relationship, but we both see other people.
Dolly Parton
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We are almost there. “There” being the best month of the year. Number nine. When the sometimes frantic-ness of summertime slows enough to allow us to catch our breath, when the nights return to being refreshing rather than nearly as draining as the overheated days. When we wake up and look to the trees each morning to see how nature is doing … is that a bit of gold there in the aspens along the highway to Ouray? When we begin to say au revoir to some of the birds we’ve enjoyed watching, as they pack their bags to leave us and follow the food.
I make a big deal every year about September. There’s that perfect song, the perfect weather, that little shiver when I think about having to move my woolen clothing nearer to the front of the closet racks. Love it all.
This has been a year of testing for Robin and myself, personally. Our ‘charmed lives’ took some hits in the health department. I will tell you true, that living with someone who always has “got your back” is a great lift to the spirit on the days when it comes up droopy.
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This autumn will be a test for our country. The November vote may signal a change toward rationality and decency in our national political life … or it may not. The more that those of us who wish for an end to what has been a nightmare make ourselves known, to stand up and be counted, the better. I don’t know exactly how the near future will play out, but I do believe that ultimately the bad guys will be brought down. One of the proverbs that I took to heart a long time ago came from … who else? … those darned Greeks once again. It goes like this:
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.
Planting a tree you will never sit under requires a deep, optimistic belief that the world will continue, that the people who come after you are worth caring for, and that your small effort today matters. Whatever our small efforts, whatever sacrifices that we make now may be like planting those trees.
Want to plant one? Vote blue every chance you get. Every single time.
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Little Home In The Valley 
Fingers and everything else crossed for your mid-terms. Going to be so important! And we’re also just seeing some cooler weather over here, at last. And some rain! Glory be!
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