Update on the brother’s hip surgery- he’s doing well. Mostly off the walker, getting out and about a bit and just using a cane these days. He’s cleared for returning to work next Thursday, but he’s a teacher so he has the summer off and doesn’t have to.

It has that weird feeling of something big being in the past already… like it existing in the present just flew by insanely quickly. It reminds me of the week Lucas spent kayaking the Pecos River and when he got home it was just… the huge thing? It already happened. It’s now in the past. How weird.

Its like that.

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In other news the garden is green mostly because I’m watering as much as I can- with an intentional eye towards full vegetation cover before the really hot weather sets in. In my day job I sell materials used for revegetating construction sites- and so I have given many a presentation on preventing desertification. How I know that 80% and above vegetation cover reduces soil temperature and evapotranspiration and so those are concepts that I apply here. Because I know and have seen that in hot climates a patch of bare soil will kill the grass next to it because it heats up too much and loses so much more moisture than the surrounding areas. This is how deserts form and spread, just on a smaller scale, here in the inhospitable heat of central Texas… and would do so in my own backyard if I let is.

(that’s my youngest and my cousin’s youngest son, there up on the shed roof, fyi)

Do I worry about water use? No. Not when there is so much industrial use of water and while golf courses are still handed out exemptions. The local governments not regulating those things but regulating residential garden use to the point of destruction makes me rebellious- I water multiple times a week. Viva la revolution.

I refuse to have an evil backyard.

Besides… it is THAT time of year again.

I have eaten a Sungold cherry tomato this week while standing barefoot in the summer sun and can assure you- the water is getting put to good use.

Of course, in the inevitable way of things I ALSO have to deal with all the weeds the supplemental watering has been benefiting.

Now, one of the worst weeds I have here- aside from the occasional stinging nettle and really, from the bottom of my heart, FUUUUCK that shit- but aside from that, the worst is the spiny amaranth. It’s easy enough to pull, aside from the spines that go through garden gloves. If you catch it early enough they don’t though, so I keep an eye out.

And yet… I couldn’t bring myself to pull this one out. It was different. Mine eyes have never seen a more perfect amaranth… I resolved it could live a little longer before I pulled it out.

I hope you can see what I’m saying here.

Yeah… so turns out that is NOT spiny amaranth… which I should have known as it isn’t spiny.

That, my friends, is the only Hot Biscuits Amaranth to ever grace this garden- in a new spot from where I planted them over 3 years ago.

Well what do you know… I’m glad something told me to leave it.

It’s odd to me as they come in all sorts of colors- pink red, burgundy, orange… but I like the browny Hot Biscuits the best. That’s the only time my preferences work like that on flower color, you understand. My brother in law likes brown irises the best, and I think this means he should be institutionalized… but it’s okay when I do it. The exception to the “don’t plant brown flowers, what are you, dumb?” rule, that’s me, just this one time.

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In other news- it isn’t a resolution, not in the way people beat themselves up over them, this just doesn’t have that vibe to it- but I’m still roughly holding to my drinking 3 times a week or less… with one notable exception outside of the vacation trip in March.

Like what, was May hard or something? That’s so weird.

Anyway. It’s fine.

So many of those were a couple of beers in the backyard around a fire in the evenings… grounding work, if we want to sound all esoteric about it.

The start of June and not drinking was easy and mostly unconscious- there was no white knuckling it. Though yesterday I had some IPAs in the backyard again- celebration of some wins at work this week. I held up my beer and cheers-ed to the sky and to the person who would have been most proud and wanted to celebrate for me… I drank his beer for him, too, afterwards.

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I have spent a LOT of time in the backyard- so at least all the water use is justified (she tells herself…)

When I’m in the hammock I generally don’t have any thoughts and I appreciate this immensely. Until this jerk decides to try a new thing.

I kept us upright, but she has the density of a thousand dying stars, so it wasn’t the easiest. I can assure you of the fundamental truth of nature- that corgis were never intended to be in hammocks.

She did enjoy herself though.

Many, many evenings and nights I’ve been back there in May. Watching the birds and the clouds and the moon and the stars and the fire and it feels like grief work or human work or soul work. I don’t know the exact mechanism or purpose and do know that it has been helping, somehow.

It is, a bit, like all of this all rolled together.

“Human watches stars come out and thinks she really did something there. More at 11…”

Whatever.

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This ties in tangentially to the above- It is a weird thing, this new “and so it’s been a year” phase. Like OF COURSE the grieving isn’t over, but it’s like I can feel the unseen pull of Western societal expectations that it’s over after a year. That weird thing where you’re the one doing it, to yourself, and yet it originated somewhere else. Like we’re Easter eggs, dyed blue against our wishes yet thinking thats the color we’re supposed to be.

Something.

Something is trying to pull me to a “now is after” phase… and I have an inner conflict that rages against that ever so gently, but persistently.

A bit like that, but she loses me there at the end. I was never ashamed of how deeply I grieved, nor is proud the right word for now.

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My love is still exactly as strong as it was in early May, 2024.

And as strong as it was in early May of 1999, too.

What IS it, this love, now? And the year, the 365 days of it… it hasn’t touched it.

No grief book so far tells me what to do with the weight of a love that persists so strongly even when it is no longer reflected back to me. What is the weight of this thing, this thing, I carry for us both now? It fills both hands, and spills over onto the floor and seeps under my feet and yet hasn’t lessened by one damn drop either.

I don’t think the answer can be found in a book or other people’s advice or an IPA or the stars or the moon or the first tomato of summer.

Lord knows I’ve looked.

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Anyway.

So it’s just… that. The ol’ brain trying to tell me the calendar page being different means something should be different and then the reality on the ground not being that at all.

It’s just weird, you know? And I continue to talk about it because some small part in me is telling me to start keeping it to myself and that “that’s enough now” and I fucking won’t. I won’t listen to water restrictions and I won’t listen to that weird pull to not... and I’ll just keep talking about it even though I feel like I must sound like a broken record at this point.

I hope it conveys- both walking around with that and also feeling like I shouldn’t be so baffled by it all.

I hope it makes sense that I ask for answers to something that isn’t even a question.

I do wonder sometimes how that all comes across from the other side of things.

So I guess I’ll just keep watching the stars and the birds and drinking tea and IPA (not together mind you- not like the worst Arnold Palmer known to man) and writing about it and asking the same questions over and over and over. Boring everyone including myself and not getting a damn step closer to any answer. But what of it… it is who I am, after all.

Kinda like that I guess.