finally, a wet fourth

At around 4a.m., on the fourth, four cats run up and down the farmhouse steps. At least this is what Ed reports as he comes upstairs to sleep. He'd just spent some time combing the black fur on the mystery cat who, for the second time, visited the farmhouse, along with the three regulars who come for evening naps here.

So you think this cat belongs to. someone?

There is no collar, but it smells of... laundry detergent. Some kind of a fragrant clean smell.

Did you try feeding her? If she's hungry then that's some evidence that she is lost or homeless.

No. She's not skittish, but you know how the rest are. If I get up, they all flee to the door. I did not want to cause a raucous. 

We search various online billboards for lost kitties. There's no listing nearby. We'll have to see where this takes us.

Not too long after, we're up. There is a window of good weather this morning and we both want to finish outdoor projects. I clean up some of the fields, Ed continues to dig up the weeds in our courtyard. With cheeper help.

The flower fields are still tame for a July day. Here, I'll show you the stars right now, but they are, for the most part, solo bloomers. Most are still biding their time.

Two more things on my list for today: take a walk in the prairie in the local park up the road, and finish picking the cherries in the new orchard. The goal: get it all done before the anticipated, the much anticipated afternoon storms pass through.

The prairie walk is the easier of the two. We have been so busy with farmette work that we haven't been hiking much (in fact, not at all!) and so it is a joy to see the prairie in its early summer splendor!

My friends yesterday talked about movement goals that they set for each day and I was thinking -- isn't that a clever idea! I am not a person who easily sets or meets goals. Days roll by on their own steam and Ed and I often change course many times. But perhaps I should reconsider? In any event, a walk sounds like a noble goal and indeed, the walk is wonderful!

And now it is getting awfully close to noon and we still haven't sat down to breakfast. This seems like a good time...

And just before the rain starts, I get to the cherry tree. This is a project. Snowdrop was able to pick many of the cherries reachable to her from a ladder. Birds have certainly done a job on about have of the fruits on this tree. So how do I reach the rest?

When I was a child, my grandma would let me climb the tree out back and I was adept at balancing myself  on the higher limbs. But this tree is too young for that. The branches aren't strong enough to support me. (Too, I am 69). But combining a foot on the limbs with the second on a ladder rung does the trick. I get to many if not all the good clumps. 

And once I am done, the rain does come down. I can't say there's enough of it. Maybe half an inch by evening. But it's a start. Let's hope for more overnight.

One more comment for this holiday Ocean post: it is of course a day with the usual (yes usual) horrors in the press. Both young families are in northern Chicago this weekend and so once again a shooting hits a little too close to home (what can I say -- every shooting hits too close to home, if not my home then yours, or theirs or someone else's). And of course, it's not only the ones suffering loss in a senseless shooting, it's hundreds more who witnessed the tragedy, who will never again feel a silly giddiness at a parade passing through. So you shake your head and think -- we've come to this point exactly how? 

I was reading in the Washington Post today how "nearly every American has foreboding the country they love is losing its way." Maybe it is? Isn't it easier to kill democracy than to build it from scratch?

But here's the thing: are we any different today than we were, say 150 years ago? It's not for me to reflect on that. I am not a historian and even though I taught Property courses in Law School for many years, I am not the right person to write about transformative events that shaped this nation. But I want to leave you with the words of one writer, the historian Jill Lepore, who did pause to consider this country then and now, looking back to a time when Katherine Lee Bates wrote the poem America the Beautiful (1893). Lepore (whose piece appeared in the National Geographic a year or two ago) says that many of us believe this to be a poem about a nobler period in our history, "... as if Bates's poem dates to a simpler America. It does not. Americans of Katharine Lee Bates's day were as politically divided as Americans of this day -- arguably, they were more divided -- over everything from immigration to land use to racial justice to economic equality. And her America was similar to this America in more ways too: It was wondrous and cruel, rich and poor, merciless, beautiful and ugly." 

And yet, here we still are. Struggling.

If you don't know about the life of Bates, I really want to encourage you to read about her in Lapore's piece here. It's a good use of your time on this Fourth of July, 2022.

I hope you had a reflective yet beautiful day. 

With love.