grace grits and gardening

ramblings from an arkansas farm girl

Lighting the Way to Autumn

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Lighting the way to autumnSeemingly out of nowhere, spider lilies bloom in Munger Place. Yesterday the bulbs were hidden underneath matted ground cover and thirsty summer grass. Suddenly they make an early morning appearance, randomly scattered, tall and sincere on leafless stems, blooming the instant late summer sunlight sends its subtle message. Surprise lilies are a sure sign that autumn is on the way.

Had I known the time was at hand, I would have watched them grow through the night.

Mother Nature’s nonchalant, often unrecognized message is bittersweet. The end of carefree summer days, lake trips, lightning bugs.

First day of kindergarten. First day of college. Change.

Hatch chile peppers and sweet corn pack the produce aisles. Fresh and fragrant. Watermelons and raspberries are priced to move, tired.
Soon the trees will be on fire. Orange, Red, Yellow. Hiding summer. Lighting the way to winter.
I dream of The Great Pumpkin.

Grace Grits and Gardening

Farm. Food. Garden. Life.

Musical Pairing:

The Great Pumpkin Waltz – Vince Guaraldi

Oh Great Pumpkin, where are you? – Linus

Cruel Summer

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Here we are again. Sitting smack dab in the middle of another sweltering summer. Another obscenely hot and cruel summer. Motionless and glaring. Water droplets from sprinklers evaporate before touching the parched grass. Mother Nature sends no rain for the crops.  Evidently she holds a grudge.

Yesterday I fried an egg in the backyard by the swimming pool. The pavement burned my feet and the skillet handle scalded my hand, as hot as the oven. The pool water is probably hot enough to poach an egg. Even the kitchen tap water is warm. 


Every night the super enthusiastic weathermen of Dallas try to inject a new twist into the forecast. Something to justify their time slot before sports. Before the Olympic news and Dallas Cowboys training camp. But there is nothing new. There won’t be anything different until that first cold snap on Halloween, if we are lucky. The high’s and lo’s are fancifully displayed and the heat index is thrown in for effect as the entire Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex collectively gasps. As if there is a distinct difference between 110 and 112.

No matter how high the mercury soars each day this summer, the record high temperatures hold firmly in place. From 1980. Nothing compares to the summer of 1980. The summer I graduated from Rivercrest High School. The summer we did rain dances in the front yard in air that cloaked our bodies like gauze.  The summer daddy had a scorched crop yet forked over college tuition. The summer we nearly had to bury him on the banks of Little River.

In 1980, thousands of lives were lost and crop damage totaled in the billions. Beer sales in Texas were at an all time high.
Irrigation. Rice. Tate Farm.
Thank goodness we irrigate the crops now. 

Only 51 days until Autumn….

talya

Musical Pairings:

Long Hot Summer Days, Sara Watkins
Cruel Summer, Bananarama

“The first week of August hangs at the very top of the summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning.” Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting.

Dragonfly Effect

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Some endangered species should just be allowed to disappear. Perhaps we intervene too often, disrupting the natural order and balance of the universe. For example, I came across a plea to save the Alpine Wooly Rat. Honestly, I hope to never cross his path. Or the Purcell Hunter Slug threatened by loss of habitat. If one moves into my garden by some strange happenstance, he will dissolve in a dusting of Sluggo as fast as the bucket of water melted the Wicked Witch of the West.

Thank goodness the dinosaurs died out. We think traffic is bad now. If you recall, Jurassic Park didn’t end well.

I’m skeptical of the butterfly effect. I know things are somewhat interrelated and devastation of one species can result in utter chaos, but is the graceful flutter of the orange dragonfly hovering over our swimming pool truly responsible for  tropical storm Debby currently stirring up the Gulf of Mexico? The dragonfly does reappear each spring right at the onset of hurricane season… Fluke? Fate? Although there are several dragonfly species on the extinct list, they are alive and thriving in our back yard.

Maybe some things should be allowed to naturally die or change or expire or evolve. Extraordinary measures should not become commonplace. No one is responsible. Everyone is responsible. We need protection from ourselves. We should just let things be.

I vote we concentrate all our ecological tree hugging money and efforts on saving whichever species eat mosquitoes.

The blood suckers are well represented this year.

talya

Musical Pairings:

Let it Be, The Beatles

Oooh, so Mother Nature needs a favor?! Well maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys! Nature started the fight for survival, and now she wants to quit because she’s losing. Well I say ‘hard cheese.’ – Mr. Burns, The Simpsons

Food. Farm. Garden. Life.

THANKS FOR READING!