Another very rainy day! But I decided to make necessity a virtue. Camera Girl has given me a list of chores to get done before the party on Saturday (or else!) and first thing was bring out the trash pails to the road. Apparently, the holiday weekend caused us somehow to miss the pick-up last week and a mistake now would be catastrophic, so out I went. I had rain pants, rain coat and rubber boots. After moving the trash and putting the mail in the box I was free (for the moment) and outside of the reach of the female of the species and took the grand tour. I have never seen the grass and the shrubs so green in the middle of July. I feel like I’m somehow in Brazil along the edge of the Amazon jungle. I half expected a caiman or an anaconda to spring out of the undergrowth and clamp its jaws on my shin. The world smells warm and alive and I expect the rabbits and the deer will take this occasion to eat some more of my daylilies even in the middle of the day, curse them. I went looking for that young mantis I saw near the pool, but he was gone. The rain seems to be keeping the deer fly from attacking me or maybe that’s just the rain gear. Either way it was peaceful and invigorating to be out in the pouring rain. Camera Girl’s vegetable gardens are lush and growing. Some of the plants could probably do with a little more sunshine but so far nothing has drowned.
My attempt to grow elecampane (Inula helenium) from seeds three weeks ago may not have failed after all. I put a packet of seeds in two different gardens and in five or six cardboard flower pots in a raised bed. None of the seeds on the ground did anything and I presume they are dead. But I think two or three of the little pots may be growing something. It’s a big yellow (of course) flower that I’ve wanted to add to the garden for years but could never find for sale. But with the advent of the internet, things like obscure plant seeds are just a mouse click away. It turns out elecampane is a “medicinal herb” that can cure evil humors if applied to the patient by a Gaian shaman or crone. “¡Ay Chihuahua, cuantos Apaches, cuantos Indios sin huaraches!” But anyway, they may be growing after all.
The blueberry bushes are actually weighted down with unripe berries. I fear that the deer are just waiting to swoop down and devour the whole crop just as it ripens. Ah well, as Camera Girl says, “Everybody’s gotta eat.” Whatever.
I was reading the ZMan’s Monday posts at his site and Taki’s. They were depressing takes on bugmen like David French and their pernicious embrace of critical race theory in the schools. It made me think that what will be needed is instruction in the true story of Western Civilization. Parents and grandparents and uncles and aunts who are interested can point children to older books that reflect the actual story of how we got here. The history books from two generations ago are full of the true stories of our ancestors and the adventures and tragedies that make up western history. The Greeks, Romans, Celts, Germans, Angles, Saxons, Vikings and the other peoples who have collided and mixed and fought and produced Michelangelo and Mozart and Newton and Maxwell and Edison and all the things that they have created. Biology, chemistry, physics, engineering, medicine, electricity, engines, nuclear weapons, space travel and computers. Imagine being ashamed of the people who made these things. The absurdity of the midgets who want our children to prefer the cultures of people who lived in mud huts and ate each other for dinner. We should be ashamed of ourselves for even tolerating these people who are ashamed of the civilization that made their lives rich beyond the imaginations of people only a hundred years ago. I’ll have to start identifying old books that can be used as resources for teaching the young.
Anyway, it’s going to be a busy week. As I say I have a list of chores to perform before the party and Camera Girl will brook no nonsense from me. She’s not concerned with my crusade to save America. She wants the porch swept and the chairs cleaned off. My ambition is to clean off the grill. I have some rib-eye steaks to cook on Saturday and I’d like them not to taste like old hamburger grease. But I promise not to neglect the site and I’m sure I’ll have outrages to comment on and sage advice to distribute to the world at large.
