You think of rain as clearing the air. And we had a nice, steady rain last night.
It did not clear the air.
In fact, we woke to hazy skies and an air quality alert. The Canadian smoke came right back down and with a vengeance, aiming a narrow plum of particles straight at Madison. Hey, Canada! We are not the enemy here! We like you as our northern-independent-country-neighbor!
With air pollution at a "dangerous" level, our time outside is limited. Sure, I feed the animals, check the rainfall amount (nice!) and place a support cage for the fallen peonies (rain does topple some flowers).
("hmmm... should I eat these strawberries now or wait for them to get ripe?")
And then I hunker down inside. With breakfast in the kitchen.
(I keep most flowers in the gardens where they grow, but when a flower falls down -- I bring it in. My peonies are huge this year!)
And a lot of couch time afterwards. I finish a beloved mystery novel (another Tana French one, set in Ireland) and start in on the next in the series -- not so much because I need to read yet another tangle of dreadful events, but because I have this weird longing to straighten out the bond that was wrecked between two principal characters in the first book. In other words, I'm hoping for a reconciliation!
And this has me thinking -- why would I crave for this in a novel? In something that is total fiction? Why do happier endings appeal to me, given that I know they have no real value except to tidy up a story line imagined by the author? Is it because the news of the day is rarely cheerful and we all look for good resolutions to life's problems elsewhere, even if it resides in fictional narratives?
I suppose happy or at least satisfying endings are like a glass of wine before dinner: they create a buzz of contentment that lasts for a short while. I don't mind using artificial devices to shake away the distress of the day's news. And if increasingly it cannot be wine, I'll take a satisfactory ending to a story line!
In the afternoon, I talk to my friend Bee in Warsaw and since it has been a while, we give ourselves a good chunk of time for this. It's perfect really, because the air quality remains miserably low here in south central Wisconsin, and so I'm stuck inside. Nor do I have the kids today, as they are off getting haircuts. Or at least one of them is -- the one who absolutely hates shorter hair. I'm happy to hand off the chore of taking them for a trim to a parent who can withstand the pressure to "not cut off too much!"
Just before I turn to dinner prep, Ed suggests a walk. The air quality has improved a little -- it's now "only" "unhealthy for sensitive groups." Being in our 70s plunks us right into that category, but we figure with masks, we should be fine.
And it is really good to be walking again. With so much work on farmette lands, we've hardly walked at all. And of course, the prairie fields in our local park are starting to look really lovely: wild indigo stalks shoot up their white flowered stems, golden alexanders send yellow ribbons across gently green expanses of prairie.
And the birdsong! I'm hearing birds I've never heard of! Warbling Vireo, Northern Flicker? And so many more.
Evening: Ed wont ride his bike in smokey air so no Wednesday evening ride for him today. I make soup, we get comfortable and watch a couple of episodes from a comedy series. It always feels so good to laugh, loudly, unapologetically.
with love...
