Summer Heat

An early morning walk around the land reminds me that we are still over 20 inches below in rainfall, a carry over from last year. The cantaloupe patch, once so filled with delightful fruit and the promise of more, lies wasted now. Dried up. So much of the garden in the same situation. The scorching sun beating down day after day.
It makes me think about the times in past generations when you really depended on your family garden for your food. How heartbreaking a year like this would be. Our fruit trees did poorly and the nut trees, no better looking.
To us, it is a loss to find so few garden goodies, but the markets are close and the shelves there are full of things for us to buy.
Grasshoppers abound in this dry summer heat. Our chickens feasting on them. So the cycle of life goes.
I am grateful that the heat of the city is far from us. That our trees and lack of highways near by, allow for cooling in the night air.
Sitting outside is actually enjoyable as the sun sets. The gentle breeze that always returns as the sky grows dark on the open plains finds its way here. The perfect time for a table set with frosted grapes, ice cold water, bread and cheese. Simple fare. No one feels like a heavy meal in the heat.
Few people sit outside these days. My grandmother who insisted on calling our front porch, " The Piazza"
coming from the use of the word in the early 19th century when the name Piazza was the fancy name for a colonnaded porch.
She would find her way outside to the "porch" in the summer heat, glass of iced tea or iced coffee in hand. Watching people pass by. We would follow her out there, one by one. And a neighbor would join us. Woman talk would fill the evening air. Laughter, gossip and many refilled glasses of ice cold tea chased away the sticky heat.
We have lost that it seems, that sitting outside together, escaping the heat of the house. We turn the air on and tuck ourselves away into anonymity once again. Not knowing neighbors, not reaching out of our own little world.
I am planning on putting some chairs on my porch, the white plastic kind tonight. We may just have our bread and cheese out front instead of out back, and being a bit like my grandmother, I may just say to my dear husband, " join me on the Piazza" with a good chuckle, since there is nothing grand about our front porch, it is just about the size of two chairs and a small cafe table !

The cantaloupe patch, pretty sad looking