In the garden, sweet peas grown from seed, started at home and carried one at a time down to the plot. They are so pretty with the Nepeta and the Lithodora. In addition, two of the native plants I picked up a few weeks ago are having a hard time adjusting but the other three are looking good now that I have everything in. What thrives seems so random somedays.
I am feeling good, so that is a relief. Sadly, I can’t say the same for Mr. Sherlock. He is struggling and has been in the hospital again but is back home now. Mrs. Sherlock has been consumed with his care, so I am glad we got to walk last Sunday.
We are heading into a period of heat and intense dryness and have an unusual Severe Weather warning looming. We haven’t had any rain for well over a week and none is forecast. Fires are a concern. The thistles in the vacant lot next door are 6 feet tall. The previous landscaper used to manage this but not the current guys. They are doing a much more perfunctory job. Everyone seems to be cutting back.
It has been, is being a bountiful year for berries. They appear to like less rain. When I walked into the room where we have out Dialogue Group meeting on Thursday just after start time (the bus schedule is getting wonky) everyone was chatting and Walt asked me to open my mouth from across the table. He placed in it a most delicious, sweet blackberry from his and his partner’s garden.
Kind of an intimate gesture. He had mentioned a week ago or so that he did this in one of his performance piece deals recently that he had the attendees feed pieces of fruit to each other. The idea of participating in that made me shudder. His monologue with discussion afterward was about Paradise. Something he has been taking a deep dive on lately. Now it is morphing into something he was working on last year, this idea of Utopia.
He lost one of his patrons this last week. This was a guy with a family foundation that has helped support Walt’s work in prisons for all these years as well as his current nonprofit that I am on the board of. One of our other board members has been diagnosed with bone cancer. It is serious. He shared about his experience and feelings about this last week. And my ER experience also freaked Walt out.
It makes sense, and Walt is articulate about this, that he is not ignoring the news and the terror and disquiet that abounds right now but is choosing to focus on positive joyful human things instead. It is annoying and useful at the same time. He can do this because he has a lot of support. He has a partner that takes care of the house and garden and social ties. He has the continued support of the patron’s family and a few other foundations. He has a ton of friends all over the world.
We went around the table and shared things that we watch or read or do that bring us a little bit of joy or make us cry. Then afterwards we all sent links to each other.
The main one I shared was the Lincoln Center awards ceremony with the Obamas and Bruce Springsteen with Sting singing “The Rising”. I admit to watching this fairly often when I need a boost.
One of the things I noticed watching it this week is that Philip Seymour Hoffman and Donald Sutherland are in the audience. So, a bit bittersweet, but still uplifting.
Walt was saying that he had been reading activists from the past saying that they wished they had stopped briefly in their dogged pursuits to experience moments of human connection and joy.
That is what those blooming sweet peas do for me.
We are not going to talk about the sugar ant invasion I have been managing on top of everything else this week, okay. Right this moment things are fine. All is well in my tiny personal slice of the world.
May support abound for the Sherlocks though, in what they are dealing with.
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