Blue Air

At last we have real weather again. The white sky and colour-sapping humidity of the last days doesn't count. I hate it. Canada has breathed on us, and for now we have air that defines edges and everything has depth again. It's a little present from September. The weather in New York is so extreme that it is almost impossible to imagine, as you walk to the subway in a filmy layer of cotton, hot, damp, trying to stay in the shade, that several months hence the same trip will be made in wool, cashmere, layers upon layers until you feel like you're carrying your life with you. And inbetween are these wonderful bits, where the sky is clean and deep, and the promise or memory of fall to come pulls at you the way it does each year, when you think you are remembering something, but can't remember what.



So, to celebrate I brought home on the subway (it had been raining in the morning so I didn't cycle) some burned orange zinnias and catnip. It's so odd that I used to hate orange, as a child - maybe because I was little in the 70's, which were basically orange. But now it's a colour that calms me. When there is a red/rusty/orange presence I feel as though I can breathe out.

There they are, planted behind some stunted purple basil.

The jungle of summer. I should do something about it.

My first snail! I couldn't squash him, he's too sweet...I know he'll chew a hole in something, and here he's on a gladiolus leaf (Estorbo got over-excited yesterday evening - I think it was the catnip - and rushed up his scratching post only to discover himself in a cul de sac, between a prickly rose and a wall, panicked, and fell into the gladioli, flattening them)...

The End. Time to plan who's coming to dinner and to find another chicken to debone. Perfect bbq weather.

Quelle horreur. It seems my neighours are moving. People have been tramping up and down all day to look at the apartment. They were perfect neighbours. I never heard them. Before them was the hell of sorority-girl and the voice that could cut glass and fell trees. Pray for me.