Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Back Yard Report: August 2018

For the third straight day we've been locked in an eerie grayness.  For the first two of those days, the gray clouds were accompanied by wind and a touch of moisture, as if a thunderstorm were perpetually about to break out.  Today was windless which seemed to allow the smoke to filter down.  For that's what the grayness is and was: a mixture of marine layer fog and smoke.  The National Weather Service says the smoke is coming down from fires as far away as British Columbia, Washington and Oregon.

Nevertheless it is August, and for much of the summer the back garden has been radiating yellow.  Planted for the first time this year, giant sunflowers bloom.

Yellow wildflowers, begun with a snippet from our late neighbor, who spotted the blooms in a field across Sunset years ago, have spread this year to dominate a corner of the garden.

Some of the other blooms are new as well, from plants gathered from the Humboldt Botanical Gardens last summer and fall.

Blooms as well in the front yard.

Besides the flowers there are Margaret's vegetables coming in: onions, lettuces (the third crop so far), tomatoes, herbs, as well as blueberries in both back and front.

So noting the surrounding strangeness and grief, the infamy, the losses and the signs, we still have the flowers.


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