stealth

Secrets, in general

I don’t live in a world of secrets. That’s obvious. I blog and even though not everything makes it onto Ocean, most big ticket items do appear here. If a daughter’s getting married, you’re going to hear about it. Had Ed fallen off the ladder, I probably would have recorded it, broken bones and all.  

[Of course, very small items pop up on Ocean as well – I’m not shy about describing the unimportant, the small change, the kind of stuff you’d once find in a 5 and 10 – colorful, maybe, but ultimately fleeting. Tossable. The stuff we all have too much of.

Sometimes, it's not even colorful.]

Secrets, the specifics

This afternoon, Ed looks at me and I can’t tell whether there is a deeply felt disappointment or merely surprise when he says – I did not know about this addiction of yours. As if all other ones were duly noted and he’d come to terms with them but this, this was unexpected!

Well yes, it’s true. I find it hard (impossible) to pass by an opportunity to expand flower beds. He should have known. Indeed, he’s been stoking the fire, what with his spring habit of dumping wood chips all over the farmette, ostensibly to kill grasses and weeds, but in my opinion – enticing me to deposit flowers in the newly created beds. He’s an enabler.

Today I went to get an extra clay pot and I came home with a plant or two and really, that would have been just fine except this is not good weather for planting things. And in truth, there were more than “a plant or two” in the car.

It’s hitting 100 degrees F again.

Stealthy habits

It’s not good weather for biking. In fact, let’s be honest – it’s not good weather for anything or anyone, except maybe the beetles that have taken to copulating in threesome configurations, especially during the hottest part of the afternoon. On our roses.

Still, we bike to Paul’s café even as I admit to Ed that I think I am drinking too much coffee and too much milk with it and...  gosh, why is this blog post suddenly all about my addictions?

Which brings me to the topic of spritzers. There is, I think, no better aperitif on a hot, hot summer evening than an Aperol spritzer (recipe discussed earlier, in March, from Italy), but there are few things as pathetic as sitting alone on the porch and watching plants wilt, with an Aperol spritzer on the side. Ed would normally join me in the theatrical production of “While the Plants Wilt” but he bikes Wednesday nights and so here I am, tossing the idea of throwing together the bubbly and the ice and the orange and the Aperol, wondering if there is anything that I can do to help the flowers make it through yet another blistering summer hot spell.

No, no spritzer. Can I settle for cauliflower, eggs and tomato?

 

In the meantime, Isis moves quietly outside, so quietly that he can’t even make the movement sensor sound the chimes on his approach to our door. A dragon fly buzzes past and the darn thing chimes, but Isis is a cat of stealth when he moves about the property. Of utter secretive silence.