The Long Hot Summer
My garden looks like a jungle and the harvest is what I’d call “decent.” Not what I wanted, but then again, the jury is still out. I say “jungle,” because the tomato plants are six feet tall. A little too leafy, though, and while there are dozens of tomatoes on the vine, they’re not ripening fast enough for my anxiously awaiting salad bowl and stomach. The cherry tomatoes are the exception. I’ve harvested hundreds of those little jewels along with about two dozen cucumbers. What a thrill it is to walk into the house with hands full of fresh produce!
The romaine lettuce harvest has been over for some time. It’s a cool weather plant, so when we started hitting the high eighties and nineties, the plants too a slumber. I’ve allowed them to go to seed.
The peppers, as expected, are loving the heat. I have more than I can possibly use.
Another 100 degree day forecasted for the lower Delta today, with humidity around 75%. Typical late summer, delta heat. Leave your seersucker trousers and starched white oxford cloth shirts in the closet. Take the straw boater if you must, but better yet, get a good Panama hat.
Even the nights are hot, although delightfully punctuated by the song of the cicadas, and the evening dance of lightening bugs. The garden orb weaving spider regularly harvests insects in her carefully made web, strategically positioned between the light adjacent to the back door and a old fence pole where the hummingbird feeders hang. Two brown bats circle above the chimney, helping keep the resident mosquito population at bay.
Sitting on the patio, I imagine I’m Ben Quick, in The Long Hot Summer, and sip on a mojito made with fresh mint from the garden. I think of what it must have been like to sit on the front porch of one of those big old plantation houses, staring down a row of oaks decorated with hanging Spanish moss. Of what it means to be a Southerner, to be connected to this bloody soil. A beautiful land marred by its proud but undeniably pestilent history. It’s a contemplative evening seemingly alone, as there are no humans, but very much not alone since I’m in a place full of all sorts of life.
The inside is quieter than outside. No sounds but the ceiling fan motor and an occasional bump caused by its uneven rotation. A candle burns on the coffee table. The stereo is tuned to NPR, and my faithful but increasingly lazy dog sleeps under a table covered with photos of my family. They’re all gone, visiting here and there, enjoying the last drops of affordable crude.
Finally, my mind, as it normally does, drifts West. I ponder a life along a stream in New Mexico, in the foothills of the Gila. Tomatoes are replaced by cacti. The cicada and orb weaving spider are replaced by the Collared lizard and the tarantula. There’s no humidity, only dry, bone searing heat. But as I grow older I realize, more and more, that us humans are connected to place, and that I am deeply connected to this place, the South. It’s hard to leave, but why? What keeps me here in this hotbed of Bible-thumping conservatism, racism and violence?
It’s home and has been home for at least five generations on both sides of the family. I know this place. I know the plants, the animals, the weather patterns, the streets, the trails, the sounds and smells. Nearly all of my memories are from here, and even if I left, I feel that it would never really let me go. It would always call me back, and I could never forget or ignore the sounds, the smells and the feel of this sensuous, steamy, beautiful place.
You’re in good company, Jack.
http://theragblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/garrison-keillor-no-time-for-dithering.html
That’s funny…I’d say great minds think alike, but Garrison certainly isn’t in my lowly league and thank god for that. Wherever he is at the moment….
Great post, can relate to it very much so. I myself am considering a move westward. Maybe even southwest(Mexico). We’ll see what happens, but like you said the place of your origin will always call you back. I don’t think a season goes by that I don’t miss the smell of the leaves or the sound of crunching snow under my feet.