I hold with those who favour fire

Two cool rainy days in a row, much-needed, and now we're back to warm. I hung my laundry on the line late last night in anticipation of the forecast, which is clear and warmer day after day until the weekend. I find the laundry does better outside than in the machine overnight, and the machine needs babying because of the low well pressure so it can only be run when I'm around.

Anyhow, we hit Warm a couple days ago, and 30C is forecast next weekend. For those keeping track, that's warmer than many of our summers ever get. In May. We're still having intermittent frost at night but I'm thinking seriously about planting my corn.

I'm doing this poetry challenge, 30 poems in 30 days, and I started by writing about plants and the land and now I'm writing about global warming. Go figure.

Tilled most of the lower garden before the tiller stopped running. I think I need to check the chain/transmission oil, it may be overheating.

Many of the apple trees have baby leaves, though the new ones don't yet. Some of the seedling apple trees have deep red leaves, I assume they're the offspring of my red-leafed crabapple.

I'm digging raspberries and giving them away, and turning the eggs in the incubator twice daily. It's a good time.

Poem-a-day catchup

PDA tactic: do it before you need it, so it doesn't feel like pressure.

#12 Epic of the first sunburn

The door is barely open when crisp lively air dances in to caress arms
That weren’t meant to be bare but maybe?
Shove feet into dusty sandals and it’s all sunshine on one side
( This one is long )

#13

I own the land, they say
But the trees grow anyway

I own the land, they say
But the birds are here and gone without invitation

I own the land, they say
But the rain comes when it will
And leaves when it wants

I own the land, they say
But still the snow melts to its own schedule

I own the land, they say
But the soil was here before my mother’s mother

I own the land, they say
But the wind blows down my fences nevertheless

I own the land, they say
They put it on a piece of paper:
Backwards, upside-down
The truth is that
The land owns me.

#14 Self-sufficiency

Every dead thing supports you.
Not a metaphor, but
Shoes made from dead dinosaurs
And soil made from plants
eaten by animals
eaten by cells
upon cells
and so on
back to the beginning
Your home designed by people long dead
Roads constructed from formulas
Developed by ancestors lost to the mists of time
And installed by people who now lie under headstones.

With so many who helped you dead
No wonder you’re afraid to ask help from the living.