Tag: summer

Summer’s end

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It happens gradually, of course, but it is in brief moments that I notice the changing seasons. Driving home yesterday evening, with the windows rolled down, I felt the mild air and enjoyed the mellow light and realized summer was ending.
Baki had been swimming and he spun in the water, his hands trailing. I watched him laughing in the middle of those concentric rings in the water and felt as if I were watching a chapter come to a close.
It is easy at times like this to let go of all perspective and allow myself to wallow in a great sea of emotions.

Peekaboo!

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I saw it from afar, as I was watering the bitter melon- a bit of red peeking out from between the leaves of one of the Momotaro tomato plants. We’ve been eating tomatoes for a couple of weeks already, but I’ve been waiting for the Momotaros. It’s a Japanese hybrid that is apparently a popular market variety. I saw it in the Territorial Seeds catalog back in 2009, and somehow ordered them too late to plant them last year. So it was very exciting to be growing them at last. The plants have gotten huge, with enticing clusters of hard green tomatoes. We ate that first tomato for breakfast with a bit of olive oil, and I’m pleased to report that it was very tasty and, as the seed catalog had promised, very sweet.

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We’ve more or less eaten all the corn on this bed, and for some reason it didn’t grow all that tall. I planted some beans under them, though, so I’ll leave them standing for a while. The nicest thing about this bed is all those morning glories- three different kinds. It is one of the many spontaneous eruptions in the garden that so often outshine plantings that we have carefully thought out.

Besotted

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More than one person has asked me if it was love at first sight when Kaya was born. I’d have to say that it wasn’t. I think my first reaction was relief, to be honest, followed by various forms of disbelief: although I’ve done this once before, it is the hardest thing in the world for me to believe that an actual human can come out of my body. There was the weeklong physical train wreck period and there was also a period of complete emotional chaos, where Kaya was the calm eye of the storm and I was flapping around him.

We wake with the sun now, so that we can water the garden before the heat of the day. Once I’m sure Kaya has had his fill of milk, I wrap my sling around myself, slip him in, and we’re off. This is the time of day when I have it all: Kaya is with me, Baki is sleeping, Ali is watering as well. I sometimes listen to podcasts as I work, and I see all of the plants, one at a time. I looked down this morning, as I have so often over the past few weeks since we’ve started watering every morning, and I sighed. It might not have happened the instant we met, but there’s no denying that I’m besotted now.