All Around.

OK. Let me not to the whatever etcetera admit impediments, OK, but a small complaint:


Could not we have received unto us even some of that? West and east they got it. North and south they got it. Here we got the thunder, a freckling of the driveway in those parts of the driveway not under any tree cover whatsoever, and nothing else. I ran the tools inside and off the table at one point. I tied up the tomatoes. Oh, needless errands. It looked like it may later on have rained out KR and AAW's way. None here, though, friends and fans of weather. None here. I'm not even recording a trace. I say it has to at least smell like rain to count as a trace.

This happens in 27408. This happens more in 27408 than in any other five-digit place I've lived. We know it rains. It rained here in April. It rained in May, sporadically and occasionally apocalyptically. It rained some in March. Here in June, though, we return to that familiar drive-by pattern: It rains on TV, on the local news, on our friends. It rains two blocks over. It rains in all environs save this one. Here, it looks like it will surely rain, and then it simply does not.

We did catch a half-cool with it into the evening, though, so I don't want to lodge a full and formal complaint. We could use more rain, yes, but we're not yet on water restrictions, and even with the creeping yellow death rearing its annual head right on time, our tomatoes so far look like this (thanks, soaker hose):


There's green fruit. There are flowers. There is, thunderstorms passing us by notwithstanding, a modicum of hope to be held onto. We tried for a house in 27215 this week. We missed out. More and more on this later. For now, we aim ourselves back, for the summer at least, towards 27408. Give me these tomatoes. Give me the hailed-out hostas. Hell, I'll take even the Japanese beetles surely coming to eat the cannas, just now coming into bloom. Give me the best hydrangeas on the block. The second year of impatiens so good they slow passing cars. Give me the pots of flowers on this porch, give me the ferns, the rosemary from my cousin's wedding I keep trying to kill. Give me the rotted brick mold on the screen door. The gutters full of maple seedlings. The filthy spiderwebbed eaves. The hot water valve that continues to leak. It would all, all of it, have been better over there, surely. But we have these trials and tribulations now. Now is the time to pull the morning glories out of the tomatoes just long enough to let them fruit and then die. After that, I'll cede the ground back to the morning glories. The Blackeyed Susans are coming in. The asters have recovered from the storms. We live here. As good as that house would have been, and as good as it would have been to learn that ground, I would have had to learn that ground. I know this one. I know what goddamn bindweed lives in these gardens. Time now to see what there is to be done about known enemies. Time now to farm this land. I haven't cut the grass since the hailstorm. Three weeks. Time now do do what's difficult, what's unpleasant, what's necessary no matter where you live. Time now to mow the lawn.