Queen Anne's Lace

I see my last post was in winter.

Some things don't change. The weather has continued odd. The financial crisis has worsened.

Some things do change. One thing to note is: Even in a "Cold Summer," lots of things grow well. Grass grows nicely when it's wet -- never fully reliable in Wisconsin any more, but most of this summer has been adequately lubricated.

Weeds almost grow better in the cold; profusion, really. I think they must be more cold tolerant than what we Europeans brought with us. Anyway, they grow, while tomatoes hang sullenly green or refuse to fruit at all and corn pushes skyward without cobs. A cold green paradise without appealing foods till the berries thrust up in mid-summer, and suddenly the richness began -- swollen blueberries, a rich garnet setting of mulberries on every mulberry tree and the Queen of All Berries, the tangy and succulent raspberry.

After that, I sensed it -- the crops are beginning to come in and though I longed for richer things, I can see that the land is productive even if not quite in what I prefer.

The truth is that what I prefer in Summer is Heat, yet here on August 15 was the first of the Hot Summer Nights we need before the next winter sets in.

I guess there were a few before, although I know it wasn't many. Maybe 5. Every time it got hot, a front came in and the temps rocketed back down, but there were those few nights. I missed most of them, busy with work and long commutes.

Tonight though I finally had the time to take a walk, in air thick with moisture, leavened only with an insistent breeze.

I tell you, it's not enough. I'll need a month of these -- not likely, either! -- to be ready for the annual freeze-up, and yet I felt myself opening up and threatening to be lost in the sheer physicality of friendly temperatures, in the human body range. A suggestion that the moisture in the air and the water in my veins and skin might well find a way to merge and give me for a moment a god's-eye glimpse of how it all hangs together on earth.

All the beautiful things amid their tragic short endings. Me thinking that even if I died tonight, I couldn't say it was a life cut short. All the muscles still work well enough too, and the aches and pains are far from overwhelming for my age. Luckier than I have had a right to ask; I think luckier even than I ever did ask after my short list of demands on the universe was met when I met my husband.

I think I have a summer spirit, easily pleased, here in this frosty land; and I think that will have to remain our little secret because my business, really, is sterner stuff.

I am a financial lawyer, after all.

But in this late summer, when Queen Anne's lace pushes up joyfully on every untended bank and the garden begins to gallop toward harvest, I've got a secret that most of the time I don't even dream of: It is enough.