Hot

Oh, man, did I fry my upper back yesterday. A friend came over with his dad's tiller and I tilled up the garden. I felt the sun beating down on my neck and thought about going in to get some sunscreen, but I knew if I put the tiller down John would pick it up and do the job, and I didn't want that. As he came around the corner of the house with the tiller he looked at me and said, "we had to pick the hottest day." "Yep," I said. Then he looked down at himself and said, "and my shirt is black." I wanted to say, "I didn't dress you" but I didn't. I sometimes can keep my mouth shut. So the garden's tilled and I planted the little herbs--basil, parsley, thyme, and cilantro. I fully expect the cilantro to die no matter how well I take care of it; my cilantro always dies. DS says he always figures his dies because it's embarrassed to be owned by a white person in northern Wisconsin, that it's used to living where it's hot and dry and the people are brown, not pasty white. Maybe the influx of Hispanics in town will enhance the atmosphere enough that our cilantro will survive? I'm thrilled that we've got a big Hispanic market around the corner from the dive shop so I can stop in to get different things like christophine and "sabor latino" yogurt with flavors like guava and mango. Plus the people are speaking Spanish, I love the music that's playing, there's all sorts of different foods to try, and it feels like a tiny vacation going in there. I'm a big fan of diversity, can you tell?

May23--Dingle Peninsula, Ireland. Standing on the high ground overlooking Coumeenoole Beach, the rocks look like they make a code. Maybe a cipher is a better word, or even a hieroglyph, for the regular arrangement of the stone that juts above the surface of the beach. Galen squinted his left eye and screwed up his mouth in concentration. The wind from the sea, cold and salty, tried to ruffle the pages of his sketchbook but he was wise to its tricks and kept his thumb on the corner. His firm grip on the stick of charcoal he drew with threatened to snap it, but he consciously relaxed his grip and watched the drawing take shape on the paper that was swelling and rippling in the cold, damp air.

I was tired and sunburned. That's my excuse for the lame-itude of that up there. But, hey, it's writing. That's a good thing, right?
--Barbara