A dry season

...Lord, send my roots rain. 

                                                G.M. Hopkins

This morning Elizabeth Matheson, writing from Hillsborough, our county seat just north of here, posted one of her perfect photos, a beautifully green summer lawn edged with crape myrtles, noting that she loved "these trees, even on a sodden Sunday."

Envy soaked me.  They had rain; I did not. Though each of the past days has warned of thunderstorms, they have been phantoms only.  In fact, it's been at least two weeks since any water fell on us.  Radar has shown storms approaching, but like tourists who suddenly decide on a more interesting detour, they skimmed around us to the north and the south, missing us by barely inches.  

My poor front slope, which Joseph worked so hard on for a year terracing and planting, must depend on my every-other-day hosing.  I'm generous and faithful at it, true...to witness, the water company's stern messages that I have doubled my use...but it's not the same as regular, good soaking rains.  

I am reminded each time I read those OWASA messages of an old and forgettable cowboy movie where, in a drought, the wife apologizes to her husband for washing the clothes, "But honey," the script has her whine, as if more than half the population wouldn't have agreed, "the clothes were dirty..."

This morning, however, is a weather of another order.  The heat and humidity we've plowed through for a while has given way to cooler and drier air...real breezes (which I could have used on last night's pea-soup walk) tease the trees even now, at the height of the day, so that I'm sitting on the porch writing this in perfect comfort.  (Earlier, I had begun the day with a pleasant coffee on a friend's cool porch.)

What this change in the air has brought me, if not rain, is energy.  After the coffee, I zipped over to Lowe's to find some wood framing for cabinet doors I want to make, the last task to finish my upstairs guest suite, painted and spruced up last week.  Though usually I approach carpentry the way I bake...with guesstimated measurements (I know, I know! not good in either arena)...this time I had a tape measure in hand and calculated to the half-inch how much framing I would need.  (I think I'm right.)  The five 96-inch pieces fit neatly crosswise in my car (you remember:  the one Alexander thought I'd had since I was a teenager).  Weather makes all sorts of difference to me.

What I need next is someone with a surer hand than mine to cut corners, so I can glue and nail the frames into place, and stain them.  I've already got some linen to put behind the frames, and a model to work toward.  Bring on the guests...

Unfortunately, we are back to wearing masks in closed spaces, and the Triangle Swing Dance Society, whose August dance I'd finally gotten enough backbone to sign up for, has had to cancel the indoor event.  It would be lovely if they found a huge field and some lights for us to swing around in the open air.  I'm in the mood to dance to some 'forties tunes...outdoors would give me much more room to stumble and catch my balance without falling. One can dream...

I'm also dreaming about Paris, and, knowing that travel won't be possible for me til at least spring or fall of next year, I've been practicing my language in entertaining ways...French films, where I learn colloquial pronunciation, and French-sprinkled books in English, where I learn odd vocabulary.  I now know how to say je rigole (I am joking), thanks to re-reading this week the comic chapters in Peter Mayle's old Toujour Provence (bei oui), which I found tucked into my little shared library out front.  I even have Alexander answering my au revoir! though he may not know which language he's hearing.  

What spices up each day is #thereal_emilyinparis, whose charming Instagram photographs of her market days and Paris walks with her infant and toddler not only take me there but serve as a geography lesson. (Plus, she lives in a superb appartement avec vue in an arrondisement to make one swoon.  Like me [but very much unlike ma maison ordinaire], she's at the end of her renovation, too.)  She says she won't mind if I reprint one or two of my favorites here.  It's out of love, I assure her. Comme ca, je peux imaginer les rues, la vie...

  

But to return to that sodden town north of us, I'd driven there the day before its lucky rain to see the new exhibit at the Hillsborough Gallery.  I especially admire Jude Lobe's wax paintings and ephemeral objets, and as she and Alice Levinson were two of the featured artists, I was looking forward to the inspiration.  And found it.  The third artist of the month, Susan Hope, whose work I hadn't known, hung beautiful long glass art stained in luminous colors to hope on, but the minute I saw Jude's new piece from her Shaman series, I took the tag to the counter.  (I'll acquire it officially at the end of the month when the exhibit is down.)  Wide-armed and blue-eyed, shaped from my favorite materials...copper, wood...its spirit lifted me.  And j'adore the hair.

Down the street at Purple Crow Books, I picked up Allan Gurganus' Uncollected Stories, along with one of Kazuo Ishiguro (as everyone knows, books can be travel, too). Then, as the heat ramped up, I took myself home from the rare treat.

So, the summer reaches its height.  I hope you, too, have found a dream or two to glide you along through drought.

Au revoir!