Summer Days

After an unusually cool and dry June (we actually had to water our gardens nearly every day), we had a week or two of more or less daily rain.  And now we have entered that season in Highlands when it is hot and mostly dry but afternoon thunderstorms are ever-present.  As I am writing this post, it has begun to rain again, one of those cooling sweet-smelling summer rains, and in 15 minutes the sun will likely be shining again.  As a result, the humidity remains high and the yard is soaking wet most of the time.  My seven-mile run this morning was difficult with the combination of high humidity and the Code Orange air quality because of the fires burning in distant California and Oregon.

The rain has been good for our gardens, though, and especially the zucchini.  I have had to give much of it away, and I am beginning to think that Karen and Vicki are growing wary on Saturday mornings when I hand them more zucchini.  “Oh no, not again!” they must be thinking.  But it is nice to have enough to enjoy and also to share.  Yesterday I picked my second batch of green beans, three more zucchini, and my first tomato of the season, a perfect bright-red beauty that we had on BLT sandwiches for lunch today.

There were enough beans to blanch and freeze – only three quarts, but they will be enjoyed this fall and winter, perhaps even as a part of Thanksgiving or Christmas Dinner, made tastier by the knowledge that we grew them in our own gardens.

After a lull of several days, work has resumed on the three-part project that we are undertaking this year.  The painting and the carport were completed in good time and the workmanship is very good.  Now the covered entry from the carport to the front door is underway, and progress is being made every day.

The only mishap so far was that on Wednesday, the phone cable to our house was cut while workers were digging a footing for a column.  It was not their fault – the cable had been buried in that location 38 years ago when our house was built and I simply forgot where it was.  I probably should have had it “located,” as the repairman pointed out yesterday, and he was right.  We quickly realized how dependent we have become on a slim black cable buried in the ground when we lost Wifi/internet service as well as cell phone service – we no longer have a land-line phone, and we do not have cell phone coverage except through our Wifi.  

I had a Kafkaesque experience reporting the outage, driving five miles to Highlands where we have cell phone coverage.  “Please enter your date of birth, last four digits of your social security number, or your PIN number to authenticate your account,” a recording demanded when I called Repair.  A woman with a heavy foreign accent of indeterminate origin then got on the line and I found that the phone company does not know my date of birth or SS information.  She referred me to a second woman with an equally indeterminate accent who patiently told me exactly the same thing.  “My PIN number is somewhere at home in a filing cabinet five miles away!” I kept explaining.  Finally I had to drive home, rifle through a file folder, unearth the elusive PIN number, and drive back to Highlands.  This time I got Maria on the phone, gave her the PIN number, and Bingo!  A tech team will be here Friday afternoon, she said.

The next day I went out to examine the cable, which had been not cut so much as nicked by a shovel.  I was startled to receive a sharp electrical shock, but found that when I returned into the house our internet was working, although slowly and intermittently.  (The first thing I did was Google, “Can a phone cable electrocute you?”  Only if you have a pacemaker, I learned.)  The repairman was friendly enough on Friday.  I thought he might have charged us for his time, but after chiding me for not having the cable “located,”  he spliced a new section in place and we were “good to go,” as he said.  

I have spoken to the owner of the local bookstore and arranged for a book signing to take place in a couple of weeks for Bells in the Night.  There will be a notice in the local newspaper in a few days alerting the local public of the poet in their midst and the book that he has just published.  Many locals know me as a runner, retired Town Administrator, and retired real estate broker, but have no idea that I am a poet.  So it is a little unnerving that in a short while my book will be in the hands of local readers, who will discover things about me that they never knew.  Martha announced publication of the book on Facebook and it quickly received many comments, and now I meet people in the Post Office and grocery store who say, “Congratulations on your book!”

One of my Facebook friends is a woman we came to know in real estate and then socialized some with before she and her husband moved away.  She commented when she read the announcement that she was going to order a copy from Amazon, and she apparently did so and posted a photo of it.  One of her friends asked her if she liked it, and she replied, “Read the first poem last night. Love it.”  And then she said something that made my day.  “Reading a poem each morning with my coffee. Savoring them one by one.”  So wonderful to hear that!  That is really the only reason I published this book:  perhaps a handful of people, here and there, now and then, might read a poem and enjoy it in the same way.

I received some free author copies and have mailed them out to a short list of friends.  At the top of the list are two aunts whom I mentioned in the Acknowledgements.  They are among a handful of regular readers of this blog, and I hope they receive their copies soon and enjoy them in the same way.

And now the sun is shining again!  Summer days. . .