Weather or not

 This week it’s raining enough, often enough, that the yard isn’t getting mowed (mown?). Wet grass doesn’t cut well. The purple lovegrass isn’t looking as robust this year as it has in years past. That may mean there’ll be that much less tumblegrass to clean up come autumn. Speaking of the upcoming season, the US Weather Service seasonal forecast suggests Minnesota has a good chance of enjoying above normal temperatures. The Farmers Almanac, on the other hand, expects our autumn temps to be bellow average. It’ll probably turn out that each of them is correct about half the days this autumn.

summer clouds between rain showers

Photo by J. Harrington

The current weather forecast includes “Heavy Thunderstorms” this afternoon/evening; “Scattered Thunderstorms” tomorrow and “Isolated Thunderstorms” Saturday. Maybe we’ll get to mowing late Sunday or sometime Monday. Since the forecast involves thunderstorms and not simple rain showers, we won’t take advantage of the interference with yard work by going fishing. Standing in a river or stream, waving a long graphite fly rod during a thunderstorm might not be the dumbest thing we’ve done in our life, but it could turn out to be the last really dumb thing we’ll do, so NO!

The rain won’t interfere with tomorrow’s trip to collect this week’s Community Supported Agriculture [CSA] share. The magic box this time will include:

• BASIL
• CUCUMBERS
• EGGPLANT
• GREEN BEANS
• RED NORLAND POTATOES
• STIR-FRY GREENS MIX
• SUMMER SQUASH
• SWEET ONION and
• TOMATOES

Tonight, the Better Half is getting creative and using much of last week’s CSA cabbage to make cabbage rolls she claims should be tasty. If so, it will be a first for me but the makings looked promising so I’m hopeful. We’ll report back on them tomorrow.

Heavy Summer Rain

By Jane Kenyon

The grasses in the field have toppled,

and in places it seems that a large, now

absent, animal must have passed the night.

The hay will right itself if the day

turns dry. I miss you steadily, painfully.

None of your blustering entrances

or exits, doors swinging wildly

on their hinges, or your huge unconscious

sighs when you read something sad,

like Henry Adams’s letters from Japan,

where he traveled after Clover died.

Everything blooming bows down in the rain:

white irises, red peonies; and the poppies

with their black and secret centers

lie shattered on the lawn.

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