Sleepy Time Down South

There’s this thing that happens in the August days after Lughnasadh and before Labor Day (you know, the major ecclesiastic and secular holidays).  Somehow, the days begin to stretch out, even as the hours of daylight continue to shrink.  I wake relaxed in the morning and seem to have as much time as I want to drink coffee on the porch with the cats.  Summer’s bounty spills onto the counter — tomatoes, corn, squash, plums — and Autumn’s plenty begins to make its appearance:  a few apples here, a ripe pear there, goat cheese wrapped in leaves, and a pot of the first hot vegetable soup of the season.  When it rains tomorrow, I’ll be glad of the warmth.

I made Chinese chopped chicken salad for friends this weekend and had cabbage left over so there’s now a big jar of my first attempt at sauerkraut sitting on the counter.  This time of year seems to welcome experiments; if you fail, there’s still time to start over.  It was sauerkraut or compost.  I used to have a recipe for the most delicious cream of cabbage soup, but I don’t seem to be able to find it, even online.  So, sauerkraut it is.  I keep reading that fermented foods such as sauerkraut are good for my internal flora (but probably not the way my mother used to fix it, seasoned with brown sugar).

The major work in the garden just now seems to be pulling things out and, I admit, yesterday I got a bit of help — OK a lot of help — from a local college student doing jobs to pay for his books.  He pulled all the invasive stuff out of my Eastern bed, which has been the bane of my existence this Summer:  needing work and being almost too overwhelming.  That left me free to pull crabgrass and wood sorrel out of the herb bed which is now pristine.

The cats are happy when I come in with some catmint in my pockets.  Merlin noses me and paws at my pockets while Nimue goes for the kill and pulls the leaves (and flowers — I’m trying to keep it from going to seed and spreading and they’re as happy to eat the flowers as the leaves) right out.  Before our first frost, I’ll probably pull it out of the ground and put it in a pot.  Meanwhile, I’m still trying to get rid of the lemon mint that I foolishly planted years ago.  That stuff will be here long after human civilization gives up the ghost.  That, and bindweed, with its pristine white flowers.   I’ve heard rumors of gardeners who use medical needles to inject saline solution into the stems and — mea culpa — I am fascinated.  I’ve pulled lemon mint out of my front beds, out of the grass at the steps of my deck, out from the strip of dirt behind the air conditioner and don’t get me started on bindweed, although I do save that for later work.

I’m trying to figure out whether sand or mulch would be better for me to push into the spaces between the stones in the patio around my fire pit to keep out the weeds.  It’s been too wet this Summer for any fires, but I’m hopeful for Autumn.  I have a few things that need burning . . . .

By evening, the cats and I are back on the porch, me with a G&T and the cats with a cricket that Nimue caught and is unwilling to share with Merlin.  He sulks and then pretends to catch cricket after cricket to show that he, too, is a mighty hunter.  She is not amused.   I am sorry for the cricket, but not enough to rescue it.  Nature is red in tooth and claw.

I’m reading hard and painful things:  books about Nazi use of the occult and a new book about chaos magicians who support Trump.  Before bed, I soak in the hot tub and watch the meteors, then sage myself to keep the evil out of my dreams.

The nights this time of year lend themselves to open windows, a small fan beside my bed, deep darkness.  You can hear the cicadas (a sure sign of Summertime in the South) and, often as not, hear rain falling on the roof.  The Virginia landbase rises up and calls to me, enfolds me, calls me its daughter.  The rivers of Virginia are full just now — we’ve had such heavy rainfall — and in my dreams I am floating down them,  floating down from the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains to the smooth land below Great Falls and on down to the Cheseapeake Bay.   This is the time of year to sit on the porch and pick crabs with friends and family, to eat icy watermelon, to watch butterflies and bees dance among the purple flowers of the inaptly-named obedient plants.

On the one hand, just now, everything is terrible. On the other hand, Virginia summers are as blessed as Virginia summers almost always are.  My landbase and I are having the conversation we’ve long had and the waxing Moon shines on the paths between the lirope and the hostas as it has long shone.

May it be so for you.