A summer update

It’s been more than two months since I last posted.

Not much has happened since then, and also so much has happened.

It reminds me of the annual conversations I’d have with some high school friends. Yes, I’m still working in the same organisation, yes still seeing the same guy, yes still living in my apartment, no nothing has changed in the last twelve months (...or years).

What has happened over the last few months?

Winter has disappeared and I have gone from wearing thick stocking and bulky scarves to gauzy dresses in the blink of an eye. All of a sudden it’s unbearably humid. Has being inside all the time caused me to forget the passage of time?

My friend Victoria said that I was experiencing bookends of weather. I like that phrasing so I am borrowing it. Bookends are fitting, especially if I can sandwich them with stories. These bookends are weighty cast iron slabs that take up most of the space on the shelf.

There weren’t that many days where I could describe the outside weather as perfect.

I rode my bike to the Botanic Gardens on the last day before they announced that it would be closed for covid. It was mid-March, the weather was a top of 9 degrees Celsius, and I was pedaling as hard I could to keep myself warm. Tiny crocuses were emerging from the frosty earth.

Ramps and multicoloured tulips turned up at the farmers market, and they disappeared as fast as they arrived.

In early June I cycled to Skokie Lagoons to be greeted by waist high carpets of white, yellow and purple wildflowers. It was a joyful sight to behold, especially since I wasn’t distracted by extreme heat or cold.

I returned two weeks later, determined to show my husband the sights only to find that the flowers had disappeared. They had been replaced by dense greenery and a sun so blazing hot it made us beeline for the shade of the poplar trees. Irises were in bloom.

Back in residentia, the millennium onions had blossomed into miniature fireworks in the ground. We blanched piles of sugary sweet snap peas and snacked on them throughout the weekend. I baked a rhubarb crumble.

On our last bike ride to the botanic gardens in early June, we packed immense bottles of water and downed it all to replace the sweat that leaked out of our pores. The lilies were glorious and there were pollen drenched bees frolicking amongst the flowers.

The wild onion blossoms around the corner from our house had dried up and their skeletal remains stood proud against their leafy backdrop.

It had gotten dark on the ride home and there were flashes of light in my sightline. I thought I had overexerted myself and given myself heatstroke, until I realised that I was seeing gatherings of fireflies. The sight of so many fireflies floating along my street was magical - even more so in my delirious state!

This week was the last week of snap peas, but the first week of corn. Along the north branch river trail, I found flittering ebony jewelwings, copulating milkweed bugs, a monarch butterfly or two, and a very curious red milkweed beetle.

Scenes pass by so quickly that it forces me to acknowledge the power - and beauty - of impermanence. I feel like I cannot do enough to impress the memory of the wildflowers into my brain, and so I am looking forward to their return next year so I can experience it all over again.

Addendum: What’s been happening in pottery lately? Not much, given that the studio has been closed. It’s reopened but I’m not keen on immersing myself into indoor classes with lots of other people. However, in late winter/early spring, I was able to level up my pottery skills somewhat by making an actually usable mug. This one is not too big, not too small and not too weirdly shaped. I also made a tiny jug for single serve quantities of milk for tea, and a tiny sake bottle for ants.