Until  recently, we had been in bad drought.  The skies opened up and rain came down as a sheet around 4 or so Thursday, finally. Lasts week was close to unbearable until the rains finally came..  Often when the mainland is hot, we are cooled by the ocean breezes, but not last week.  I had finally had to sleep with air conditioning after lying awake in discomfort two nights in a row with the humidity especially keeping me restless.  Even the cats are appreciating air conditioning.  Normally Willow gets in bed when I do, we have our lovey-dovey ritual of petting and purring and then she goes out onto the screened in porch to watch wildlife for a while.  She comes and goes during the night, sleeping with me part of it. But since I’ve turned on the air conditioning, she plumps herself down on the bed and doesn’t leave till way after dawn.  Mingus, who is a lover of anything hot – he spent last week camped on the dehydrator while I was drying catnip I’d picked – is plastered right against Willow enjoying the cool wind. Then it turned cold, record breaking heat, then record breaking chill.  The cats got against me or on me to keep warm at night.

It was hard to keep everything hydrated on well water.  We do the best we can and wish for rain, beg for rain. We could use a lot more than we’ve got so far, a bit over an inch.   It’s also worrisome that this extreme heat – the hottest June on record here—is warming the ocean.  One thing that protects us from hurricanes is the cold ocean.  But now it isn’t.  We’re very vulnerable. I’m hoping this chill will cool it down some.

We finally managed to find some relatively local strawberries.  I can’t stand the big wooden imitations from California.  East Coast strawberries are smaller, actually ripen and have flavor. I made strawberry jam after freezing so far 12 ½ pints and 1 quart.  For the first time in about 12 years, Woody managed to pick many sour cherries, which I love.  We froze a quart for a pie and made cherry preserves. 

How can Republican Senators sleep at night?  They are preferring the billionaires to their constituents, putting the money they get from the gun lobbyists and the fossil fuel companies to children and adults’ survival.  People are shot randomly every day in every city large and small.  The police continue to shoot Blacks for minor traffic violations.  Fire and drought are eating up the West.  All they want to do is get their huge largess from the rich and powerful and vote to suppress as many votes from ordinary people as they can.

The lament about people not going back to low paying jobs is a bad joke, and just another legacy from The Worst President ever. Without immigrants, nobody takes lousy jobs unless forced to by circumstances.  Who wants to work in a hot restaurant kitchen during increasing global warming?  Who is willing to go out under the hot sun and pick what needs to be harvested?  Who wants to work in chicken factories if they aren’t desperate to send money home to their hungry families abroad? They start at the bottom of the ladder and need to save themselves and families left behind. They work hard at the worst jobs until they can move on to something better.

I am back writing two or three poems a week now that the intense concentration on other poets’ work is over at least till I have to blurb a manuscript.  We managed to bring off the 2021 Intensive poetry workshop in spite of the difficulties in finding a space.  This has been an extra productive week because I’m doing no garden work. I hope it will cool enough to work outside this weekend. And always, I hope it will rain some more.  Wednesday evening, my poetry group met face to face in my livingroom for the first time in a year and a half.  At the last ZOOM group, we voted to resume in person sessions.  I’m excited about this as I think there’s better feedback when it’s more spontaneous  and we don’t have to raise our lands and be noticed to make a comment. It felt great to be together for real, especially after an unpleasant event last weekend.