finality

Sometimes you expect finality and sometimes you expect things to continue and oftentimes what happens is exactly the opposite of what you would have predicted.

I had made two predictions yesterday -- one about eating outside, the other about plans for the future and it turns out I was wrong about eating outside and the jury's still out about whether I am right or wrong about the future. I'm betting I'm right and if I am right you will soon learn the full context of this rather vague discussion. I need certainty before I post things on Ocean. (Except for predictions about eating outside, where certainty is not required.)

Yesterday was such a bizarre day that I'm still trying to put a correct spin on it.

First -- the weather. Shorts and tank top were not light enough. The temps peaked at 88 but it felt like Miami Florida in mid August.

I worked on the porch, trying to understand how it could be that the flowers are spent and yet the weather is screaming at them that it's not time to retire! Too early! Too soon!





Fine, except when you're done, you're done -- they retort and continue to drop their petals and go into hibernation.

In the afternoon, I take a break and plant my seven irises -- four in one bed, two in another, one on the side. Really? -- they seemed to be asking. You expect us to settle in and establish a home base here before winter? If you say so... I add good composting soil to make the transition that much pleasanter. Now it's up to them.

Finally, in the evening, I am reeling from a tumultuous day of work and decisions and irises and the hot muggy air and as I continue to work on my laptop I get the email warning of storms coming through. And it is at this point that Ed sets up the ladder to begin one of his most challenging construction projects ever -- to  replace the porch roof with strips of glass.





It will be a long and arduous job -- weeks and weeks of work up there -- but I have to throw out this question: are you *sure* you want to begin just as the storms are about to descend on us?
He shrugs: tell me when they're here -- and continues with his sky-high assessment of the work ahead.

The irony is that the skies turn an eerie dark navy and the trees shudder a little and then -- nothing happens. A flash elsewhere, a small gust and quiet.

You'd think that the air cleared and that we have returned the corner -- to the same old crisp fall weather that we count on now, but it's never quite like that, is it? More often, transitions happen over an expanse of time and this one is moving slowly, artfully, so that in the morning, I step out, sample the air and say to Ed -- we'll be eating breakfast on the porch again.

And we do.