No Leaf Work Today

     We were busy with other things and, I have to admit, I have felt pretty yucky.  Better once the sun came out, but that was late in the afternoon.

     I did housework instead.  It is, after all, the work that is always there to do.

Autumn Time, Autumn Time...

     The leaves are falling and so is the rain.  Tam and I missed our chance to mow up the dried leaves last weekend, so it looks like we'll be mowing up wet ones this weekend.  It's no fun, and the bags can't be more than about half full without getting too heavy for the city's crews to lift.  (We only have to do a dozen or so; they'll be doing thousands -- if they don't tear up their backs.)

     The good news is, dry leaves are a lot dustier, and I don't get along well with it.  So I'm going to call it a win -- an icky, slimy, heavy win.

Hurricanophoon

     By the time the remnants of tropical storm Helene get to Indiana - and we're getting the fringes already -- it will be high winds and lots of rain.  A mess for us, but nothing compared to the trouble the people in Florida where the thing hit with as a hurricane with Category 4 winds.

     I'm not looking forward to it, but if we avoid heavy downpours and the winds don't get too crazy, it should help out my tomato crop in the back yard.

Resilient Wheat -- Chickens And Eggs

     The weather's highly variable these days.  Few people dispute that, however much they disagree over causes.  Weather becoming more variable is a problem for farmers -- and when farmers start to have problems, the rest of us has better worry: nobody's growing corn or cattle in a factory, at least not yet.*

     One problem is that cereal grains are nearly monocultures,  There's not a lot of diversity within each type.  Specific varieties of corn, wheat and so on are bred to be disease, insect and whatevericide resistant, to grow to a uniform height, and to grow under specific conditions.  (The late "Farmer Frank" James waged a long fight with commercial seed companies, since he grew his own stuff from his own seeds gathered the previous year and they were sure he was cheating; he wasn't.  What he was, was stubborn.  As farmers often are.)

     It wasn't always that way.  Prior to (highly) mechanized farming,† there was a lot of genetic variation even within the broad varieties of grain.  It gave the plants as a whole better odds of getting through droughts or prolonged wet weather, cold spells or baking heat.  But that variety wasn't so great for harvesting equipment, nor for maximizing yield for a given situation.

     But we're human beings.  Our species lives in the space between chaos and order, bouncing from one to the other.  When enough of us face a challenge, we'll try all the possibilities.  Up in the Pacific Northwest, small-scale "artisanal" farmers and bakers and a university lab full of bread enthusiasts are trying things -- like greater variety.  Like whole wheat.‡

     And these days, you can grow that more-varied stuff with commercial equipment.  Farming machines are better, smarter, more able to deal with randomness.  --At a price.

     Greater variety means greater resilience.  But it also make it more likely farmers will need new machinery.  It means seed companies are going to have to look for a broad spectrum of resistances and introduce new and more internally-varied lines of crops, and they do so love their matched-up seeds, weedkillers and pesticides that work together as smoothly as a key in a lock -- and are locked into tight genomes that will fall in lockstep unison if a new bug or plant virus emerges, or if growing conditions change too much. 

     As a culture, we can get there from here, moving from vulnerability to resilience.  And if the past is any guide, we probably will.  But it may not be especially easy, and it sure won't be cheap.  And there's the chicken-and-egg: it's not going to happen out of the blue.  Events drive changes; changes drive events.
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* They are growing chicken, at least on a small scale.  State governments have not reacted well to Chicken Of The Beaker, and if you were hoping to try a platter of chicken nuggets that never clucked, don't be in a hurry.
 
† Let's not kid ourselves: farming has always been about mechanization.  Rows replaced random planting; Sharp sticks replaced poking holes in the dirt with a finger, plows replaced sharp sticks and underwent continuous improvement.  Oxen replaced people; horses replaced oxen -- but only after a proper horse collar was invented; horses gave way to steam, steam to internal combustion, and some bright guy has already shingled the house and barns with solar cells to keep his electric tractor charged up while laughing at diesel prices.  In dim prehistory, it was apparently sufficient for early farmers to see a wheeled wagon from afar to spur them making their own versions.  Humans have been cheating Malthusan limits for centuries by getting better and better at growing food though better technology.
 
‡ I grew up in a household where there was always whole wheat bread -- usually Roman Meal -- next to the white bread, and most of us preferred it.  It'll hold up to a proper sandwich better than store-bought white bread, and it tasted better, too.  One driver of this was that Mom would occasionally bake white bread from scratch, and that'll ruin you for the store stuff; commercial whole wheat is much closer in taste and texture to scratch versions.

I Don't Care....

     You can call it climate or you can call it weather.  Either way, it's too darned hot.  95°F* or more yesterday and the day before, and today?  More of the same, with thunderstorms.  Thursday, the meteorologists are calling for a cold snap, probably no more than 85°F at the worst.  I'd better break out my winter coat.
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* That's like, what, 355° Centigrade or 356° Celsius (old style), right?

Got Morality?

     An interesting essay -- it's a chapter from a book -- on the basic elements of morality, shared across our cultures.  The piece presents itself as addressing the need for religion as a basis of morals (or at least of moral behavior), but I'm not sure that's something that lends itself to rational debate.

     While moral behavior as the article defines it is shown to be its own reward, people are strongly motivated by punishment/reward structures.  Assuming you believe the religion you practice -- and surely you do -- the idea of some kind of cosmic scorekeeping and reckoning-up is a very strong impetus to do right.

     While I will happily argue that it's not the only source or foundation for moral behavior, no religion that I know of is inherently immoral, at least towards co-religionists and most often towards other people as well.  I'll join with the Founders and Framers in believing religious faith in general to be of public utility, while refraining from singling any out.  I don't happen to practice one (and I like to believe my behavior is nevertheless moral) but I'd sure hate to live someplace where religions were banned.

We Had A Storm This Morning

     It came through this morning  a couple of hours before sunrise: a late-summer morning storm.

     First thunder like distant kettledrums, booming, looming, a far-off sizzle of lighting; then closer, elephants on the march, thumping, pounding, broken by zaps as the bolts found targets.  Rain next, a few drops hurled against the window like sand, the screen rattling, more rain rushing like surf and spraying the window, hissing like eager cobras hunting a way in, and behind it the thunder and searchlight-blinks of lightning.  Wave after wave of rain, walls of pure noise above the thunder's hammered anvil, finally fading.  The storm went stalking away, thunder muted, the rain less and less and then near silence; just the downspouts, ringing faintly with the last drops of water seeking the earth, and an occasional distant by-the-way thud of thunder from the backside of the front.

     It was worth losing an hour of sleep.  I had time for a quick nap before the sun started hauling itself over the far edge of the planet and the cats demanded breakfast.

     The early light was an electric silver-blue, barely enough to pick out water beaded on every twig, tree limb and wire, along all the gutters and fences.

Dipping A Toe In

     The headline was interesting, combining two facts: more than forty percent of the U. S. population lives in coastal counties, and sea level rise is accelerating.

     People have differing opinions about climate change.  That's normal for our species -- in an age of space travel, people have differing opinions about the Earth being a sphere or flat, after all.  But while only twenty-four people have ever been far enough into space to get a really clear look at the big blue marble we live on, well more than a third of Americans can ride a bicycle to the sea shore and have a look for themselves, year after year.  Far fewer will find themselves under water in the near term -- in many places, the land rises quite steeply from the shore, after all.  Storm surges will be more of a problem, from the southernmost tip of Texas all the way around to New York City once in a great while, depending on the whims of hurricanes, themselves getting stronger and more frequent.

     Call it climate; call it weather.  Either way, the graph of water level over time says it's coming.  Does the name matter when your beaches become scuba sites or you're sloshing around the ground floor of your house in gumboots, salvaging what you can from the storm?

     It's certainly going to have an effect on the discussion.

     Of course, we said that when men went to the Moon, and we're not out of flat-Earthers yet.  Still, it's a lot harder to breathe water than to pretend geosynchronous communications satellites or the GPS and Starlink constellations are fake.

Propositioned

     One evening a few days ago, I went out the back door and nearly ran into a firefly hovering at face  level.  He turned toward me -- and flashed his little light!

     I won't kid you, it was flattering.  At my age, you take positive attention where you can find it.  But it wasn't to be.  I told him he was kind, and gently wafted him away from the back stoop and sidewalk so he'd hover over the grass and have better odds of finding his match.

Never Left The House

     It's too miserable out there.  I've got enough food and household goods to last through Monday, so why go out into the heat?

He Loathes Travel

     Poor Holden Wu!  His yearly vet visit was this morning and despite getting the relaxed-kitty drug, he does not relax.  He went into the carrier without much trouble, but began to complain on the way to my car and through most of the short ride.  He had more to say, all of it sad-sounding, when we arrived at the vet.

     Once in the exam room -- and they get you right in -- he wasn't interested in leaving the carrier and had to be lifted out.  Once out, he couldn't decide at first between hiding in the little shelter they provide and huddling at my side, between me and the carrier.  Eventually, being next to someone familiar won out, and he stayed put until it came time to be carried to the exam table.

     The vet had brought along a spare towel for him to hide under and it helped.  He got through the exam without panicking, had his shots and was headed for the carrier again when she decided to take a closer look at some of the parts cats are embarrassed to have inspected.  But he got through that just fine, and climbed inside the carrier with visible relief, only to cry again when I left him for several minutes to pay the bill and sort out upcoming appointments.  It turns out he hasn't been brushing his teeth, so he's probably going to get dental work next month.

     He rode back home, not without complaint, and became impatient when I carried him through the garage and into the house, rushing back and forth inside.  Home at last!  safe on the kitchen floor, he emerged from the carrier with a happy burble and followed it with a longer sentence when he was sure he was really home. He was sprawled on the floor in the library surveying his kingdom when I went to the office to write this.

It's Raining!

     It's not much of a rain, but it is raining, listless from the heat like everything else right now.  I'll take it; it will cool things down a degree or two, and every bit helps.

     The air-conditioning here at Roseholme Cottage is keeping up, barely; we have to chase the outside temperature up and down a couple of degrees at a time so the cooling doesn't freeze up, but it's doing the job so far, controlling humidity and keeping us from melting.  It will run better after service, but that'll be awhile.

     Having grown up without air-conditioning, it continues to be something of a miracle to me.  Summer nights used to be a dark and sweaty misery haunted by the roaring of fans, laying awake on top of the covers until you conked out from sheer exhaustion.  Having cool, dry air pumped out of the floor vents is amazing.

Knocked Out

     Oh, not literally, but dealing with the flea infestation is really taking it out of me.  This week was supposed to be a relaxing vacation.  Tam is away most of the time dog-sitting, and all I had to do was sleep, eat, and breathe (etc.)

     Instead, I'm not getting good sleep, I've got laundry running most of the time, and I need to hang multiple new curtains -- after I take down and bag up the old ones.  Which will happen after I have stripped the bed, bagged the bedding and pillows and treated the mattress.  I've bought curtains, a pillow, and various flea treatments.

     I've been through worse; when Tommy the cat and his sisters were little, well over thirty years ago, my well-carpeted duplex was swarmed with fleas; my next-door neighbor was just short of being an animal hoarder and the little black cat who was Tommy's mother had been feral (and ran away to that life as soon as the kittens were weaned).  Back then, I slept with flea collars on my ankles for a month (don't do this now, they've changed the chemicals), while cycling everything washable through the laundromat at least twice.  But it's no fun to deal with, even with my very own washer and dryer and no next-door source of replacement fleas.

Fleas!

     I knew the cats were itchy.  I was a little itchy, too, and for two days, I thought it was allergies.  Huck was especially miserable, scratching and grooming almost all the time, and I ran a lint roller over him, just in case.

     It collected a fine crop of fleas, some still twitching.

     After consultation with the vet, last night they got the approved treatment, and as of this morning, everyone is doing better, even me.  There's rather a lot of vacuuming and laundry in my immediate future, though. I don't know where they came from; Tam and I both take long walks; many of mine in the open fields of the North Campus at work. We've both done yard work and since she likes to take a long lunch and write at nearby eateries, she meets a lot of people's dogs. And both of us have been keeping screened windows slightly cracked on cool days and nights, where long-haired Holden Wu likes to nap. Any of those things could have let fleas get in.

Step Forward!

     It looks as if we've once again got volunteer tomatoes in the backyard garden patch here at Roseholme Cottage.  They're probably the small, fast-ripening cherry tomatoes that came back last year.

     This is a pretty good trick.  Tomatoes are not a perennial; they're not even close.  Originally a jungle plant, tomatoes are not a natural fit to most climates in North America.  The little cherry tomatoes have a couple of tricks: they are very dense, so it's easy to miss the little tomatoes until they are too ripe -- and they go from ready to eat to overripe in a twinkling.  I tend to bury the too-ripe ones where they fall, or chuck them along the fence, where I'm hoping another patch will take root.  So far, the fence weeds have defeated my efforts, but the roughly circular garden patch, dominated by a sprawling and overly aromatic sage plant, has paid off.  I let the autumn leaves pile up on it and try not to disturb it until late Spring.  (We're in that three-week interregnum, after the beginning of meteorological summer but with astronomical spring lingering until the solstice.)

     The sawtooth-edged tomato leaves are distinctive, as is the tiny-tree structure of the new plants.  There may be some lookalike weeds fooling me -- nightshade is a close cousin* and the young plants look similar -- but I didn't have any in the patch around the sage last year, so my hopes are high.
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* But not that close, at least around here.  It has a less-dense structure with purple flowers and fewer of them, compared to the bushy leaves and yellow flowers of the tomatoes.  The fruit is mostly empty, too, with prominent segments.

66 Years

     It strikes me as wildly unlikely.  Nevertheless, there it is: I have been on this planet for sixty-six years as of today.

     Here's to sixty-six more!  I don't trust the rest of you lot with this place; I'd like to stick around and keep an eye on you, just to make sure you don't mess it up.

...Back To Doc-In-A-Box

     The official diagnosis for what's wrong with me is, "Some cold viruses just linger like that.  Treat the symptoms, get plenty of rest, and eat a balanced diet."

     Okay.  I've been doing the first, doing lots more of the second than I really should, and as for the third, I'd eat a darned gyroscope if I thought it would help.  For tonight, soup and a salad instead, I think.  Also, they suggested OTC allergy pills, which I will totally start up again as soon as I get home.

     Chest rattles, cough, sniffles, exhaustion, aches and the occasional temperature spike notwithstanding, I am pretty sure I was worse off last week, so if the trend continues, maybe next week will be better.

It's A Beautiful Sunny Day Out There

     But I am, in fact, going back to bed.

An Ancient Dilemma

     Those of us who have had outside cats, or barn cats, or have fed ferals know that many cats regard snakes, especially small to medium ones, as A) great fun; B) a dire and traditional enemy; or C) all of the above.  And you you will find yourself, from time to time, with a cat in one hand and a snake in the other, trying to decide which one to let go first.

     You're not alone:

     Yes, that's the real deal.  Of course, the ancient Assyrians put together an entire legend, with gods and lions and serpents, but I think the story behind it is pretty obvious. (And speaking of legends, the "holding back the cat while accepting a pizza delivery" statue dates from dim, ancient 1987.  I still love it.)

Indescribable Light

     The chaos at work was well-managed and I managed to take several trips outdoors during the eclipse, including all of totality.

     The reports are right: it's difficult to describe.  It's moving.  Well ahead of totality, the light takes on otherworldly feeling and the sky darkens.  Even at totality, with a couple of planets visible, our sky remained a deep blue, with the shadowed side of the Moon the only true black, the wispy solar corona slowly waving around it.

     I'm happy I was able to see it.