Oh friends, what times we live in!

You have probably heard about the assassination of Minnesota State Senator Melissa Hortman, her husband and their dog, and the attempted assassination of State Senator Jim Hoffman and his wife, as well as the many names of other people on Boelter’s list. Neither Hortman nor Hoffman are my elected officials, nonetheless, they do the work of legislators running the state, and by all accounts, Hortman did good work. I am horrified that this is apparently how we settle our grievances now, and then certain people, some of them elected officials, continue to pile on the muck by spinning out cruel lies.

And while the grief and horror of all of that is still fresh in my city, the United States has now bombed Iran. The President seems to think it is a great jolly game and a strategic move to get Iran to agree to a nuclear deal, a deal that already existed when the President was in office the first time and so blithely withdrew from it. And now here we are, on the verge of I’m not sure what, because he thinks that bombs make a great negotiating tool.

Meanwhile, with everyone looking at Israel, the U.S. and Iran, no one is paying much attention to Gaza at the moment, where Israel keeps massacring people waiting in line for food.

So it is I’ve been having a much needed vacation since Juneteenth during which I have been mostly offline. It’s been glorious! I’ve been enjoying my free time by building and strengthening community and friendships with my Buddhist sangha, meeting a long time friend for vegan ice cream on what has so far been the hottest day of the year (heat index of 105F/40.5C), having my annual eye exam and picking out new frames for my new prescription because it’s been years since I have gotten new ones and they will hopefully be ready to pick up at the end of this week, and—surprise!—spending 5-6 hours or more most days in the garden.

One of the first garden tasks was replacing the chicken coop roof. When we built the coop 9 1/2 years ago we topped it with a green roof. I had visions of flowering sedums making for a beautiful view and extra insulation for the coop. Well, it is hard to water a roof one cannot reach and so everything I deliberately planted from sedums to low-growing annual flowers, died by the middle of summer. Even weeds couldn’t make it up there. And the wood boards we used to frame the beds were rotting. We took it all down and the coop is not roofed with corrugated metal. It is so shiny and reflective when the sun glares off it that we can only look at it by squinting or wearing dark sunglasses. But it will last until the end of our little flock, and probably beyond.

The chickens did not care we were messing with their house. They sequestered themselves out of the way beneath the elderberry and amongst the knee-high prairie roses. Just as well too since they might have ended up beneath the soil we raked off the roof, or stepped on, or whacked with a sheet of metal. I suspect it is probably louder inside the coop when it rains at night, but I’ve always loved the sound of rain on a metal roof, so maybe the chickens do too?

The roses put on quite a show this year. I have a William Baffin climbing rose in the main garden and the prairie rose in the chicken garden. Both are single flowers. This means the bees have open access to the pollen, and wow, did they enjoy it! Every time I’d pass by there seemed to be an ecstatic bee covered in pollen dancing around on a flower. They were like my cats when I’d give them catnip. Utterly delightful to watch them buzzing and vibrating and dancing.

Not so delightful is the devastation to the garden peas. It turns out there were not one, but two, baby rabbits that slipped through our fencing. And they have enjoyed 2/3 of my row of beautiful peas. We fortified the perimeter and have managed to evict one of the rabbits. The other one is very good at hiding, but their days are numbered! Over this last week I have not only weeded all the garden beds, but I have also thinned out all of the overgrown perennials along the fences, fewer places for a rabbit to hide. The only place now is in the raspberries, sunchokes, and stinging nettles, but we have long rabbit scaring sticks to poke in there and herd them out. Hopefully rabbit #2 will be dining and sleeping elsewhere tonight.

The radishes are done for now. I’ll plant more in August for fall eating. There is still plenty of salad greens of various sorts, and while the garden peas are devastated, the sugar snap peas are going strong. The bush green beans are looking like they will be flowering soon. The pumpkins are flowering and vining as are the cucumbers. The butternut squashes are beginning to vine and climb their ladder. The carrots are looking gorgeous and there are teeny tiny jalapeño peppers. The garlic put out their scapes and I cut them to eat, except for two I left to flower so I can plant the seeds. The garlic seeds I planted last year are growing strong, and while they won’t produce a bulb this year, next year I should have more garlic than ever. Fingers crossed!

Between the honeyberries and the serviceberries, we had enough to enjoy in pancakes one morning. Next year there should be even more as the plants are finally big enough to begin producing. And now the black raspberries are starting to ripen. James picked the first few yesterday. After sheltering in the basement last night from 12:45 – 1:15 a.m. because the tornado sirens were going off, the lightening flashing fast and frequent, thunder booming, and the rain torrential, the next several days will be dry and sunny to ripen up those raspberries. Thankfully we had nothing but lost sleep from the storm. There were a couple of tornadoes that touched down just outside the metro area, but no one was hurt. It has definitely been a more active severe weather summer than usual this year.

Reading

• Graphic Comic Novel: Spent by Alison Bechdel. Highly entertaining.
• Book: Rakesfall by Vjara Chandrasekera. An interesting book about the rise and fall of empires, power, time, history, ghosts, and more.
• Short Story: Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole by Isabel J. Kim. I love that even all these years after Ursula K. Le Guin wrote her short story, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas we are still gnawing on it. This story by Kim won this year’s Nebula for short story.
• Poem: Sweet Child, do not be as wise as your parents by Kinshul Gupta
• Essay: Cloud, Cloud by Siobhon Rumurang. Climate change in the South Pacific. The Island nation of Tuvalu is relocating their country online as their island sinks beneath the rising seas. And the essay author details activism in Guam where they have, for well over a decade, been trying to stop the U.S. military from firing lead-filled munitions on a huge acreage of land that includes the island’s fresh water aquifer that is in danger of being poisoned by the lead.

Quote

[E]normity cannot truly, fully be spoken of without recourse to fable. There is a dread scale at which only myth works; only nightmare has the technology. Worlds must be broken to convey that attempts to depict a multidimensionally unspeakable reality in fiction, including this one, are but contemptible in the final reading. We posit the akashic record. Is it so bad to want to be remembered, to have all things remembered, to have and to hold? But maybe it’s exploitative to attempt truth in fiction, maybe it is mere commodification only, maybe fabulism strips histories of whatever dignity realism might have to offer—or maybe it’s the other way around, maybe it’s mimesis that takes away history’s dreams and fantasies, makes it small and lonely and vulnerable in a haunted world.

~Vjara Chandrasekera, Rakesfall