Rainy then Hot

Our lawn gets greener and greener as the skies carried rain almost all week. And not just Florida, it's the end of the day and a thunder storm is rolling through rain, this was like Portland January I haven't seen sun for two months rain. Heavy dark grey clouds keeping the day underlit. Rains and spittle and driving downpour and then rains again all day long. Maxim said that since it didn't rain like that here very often when it did it seemed to last forever. Rain forever last week. Monday through Thursday. Then Friday the humidity set in to stay through the weekend. The smoldering fire pit in the foreground has turned ablaze and I hope to finish burning out the pine tree stump tonight. The goal was to do so this summer. The goal was met, we hope. The kids signed up for fall soccer today and Noah has been invited to play fall baseball. Maxim visited with her friend Tootie and complained yet another day about the injustice of being an older sister. School began last Tuesday, so the kids and our schedule has begun to make that steady shift into fall. I have one more week and then the summer denial has to end, because they expect me in the classroom Monday, Labor Day. This week we hope to get the soil we need for the planters and get our fall crop in the ground. I hope the sun can reach them. The morning light is coming later, evening sun is falling sooner, the shrinking days are palpable now. Fall is on its way.

This coral honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens) has put out just one flower since we transplanted it farther back in the yard. We expect more next year. The hope for a finished stump is washed out as a torrential, it's dusk in Florida so it's going to pour buckets, down pour has arrived. The fire is out. Tomorrow perhaps.

Finale

Summer winds down for all of us this week. The theme is transition and novelty. The kids' school voted to be a school uniform school, so the kids purchased matching polo shirts and kakis. A fourth grader. Maxim is nervous, anticipatory. The buzz among her peers is that the rubber really hits the road in the fourth grade. No more cruise control. No more easy homework. Everything up to now has been a dry run, going through the motions. The learning start now. So she's understandably nervous. But we're sure she'll do fine. Noah, the second child, the seven year old boy, has some idea that school starts on Tuesday, and will more than likely do just as fine as he did last year. But today there is no school and so he's not going to put his mind on such distant future matters. Marcela begins school this week as well. The textbooks are purchased and her nerves as well are turned up a little more as she breezes her way through the restoration of a blue print for a Lakeland client and then offers the last touches to our back yard restoration project, stringing cross rope for the climbers on the trellis and raking eucalyptus leaves into the trenches left by our former driveway. Depending on a few contingencies, we may get the planters filled and under way today (planting season begins now in this climate region) and may also finally paint the fascia along the roof. I learned this week that I won the 2010 Oscar Winther Award for my first published essay, which lifted everyone's spirits and provided the needed elixir for the final push on the book.

As much as we complain, sometimes, about this maddening heap of sand they call the Sunshine State, there are perks and benefits that cannot be denied. Many summer evenings, one need only step out the front door and look west.

"Home"

Is indeed where the heart is. Back after two weeks of touring that other landscape, where home feels more grounded in soils and granite rock. The house has been well-cared for. The rains fell most of the days during the weeks we were gone and our lawn had sprouted significantly. You can see the images before this piece was mowed at our Flickr site. The completion of the deck project and its residuals left us needing to throw everything together into the shed just before departing. Yesterday we remedied those conditions, actually throwing things out and repacking carefully. There is something incredibly satisfying about a well-organized shed, thinned of its excess. It won't last.

Now in the middle of August even the nights are humid. We set up the fans and try to keep mosquitoes at bay. Which works to a point, but the rains from the past two weeks has hatched a voracious new generation of blood suckers. There is still painting to be done and soil to fill the planters before the new growing season is upon us. But, as Marcela said when we returned, "this time it feels like coming home."