Relief

Six o’clock thunderstorm, replete with clouds, wind, rain, and a lower temp.

A walk in the shade with Pax, shady, yes, but still hot.

And when the rain came, we cooled our heels.

On To January

Change needed in physical and political climate.

Pinned Under a Pile…

…of high pressure. Cloudless, windless, and hot.

Strangest Fourth…

…in my memory. Planet baking, virus raging, racism thrashing, Americans locked out of the rest of the world, and a madman in the Whitehouse. Still…

…a holiday spaced-out patio picnic with the neighbors, featuring Green Egg brisket and Sue’s world-famous potato salad.

Now We Have To Water?

Seems like it. Sun and heat have been baking the land, so come dusk we will wield the hose.

Purple coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea) like the weather more than I do.

Not Much Nice…

…about temps in the nineties.

It’s hard in the heat, in the Time of Covid, to get enough exercise, but we did wrestle with an overgrown (volunteer) redbud early this morning, and got it pruned back to to civilized status.

Looking Forward To Lemon Cake

Could be the highlight of the day. Warm and sunny, but not horrible. Mechanical cooling still necessary, and the preferred time for dog walks early and late.

And, another perspective on the house and garden…

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Getting Back To School

Assumption:
For psychological, pedagogical, and economic reasons, kids need to be in school five days a week, with the school itself operating as close to normal as possible.

There may be a way to do this. Here are some steps that might make it possible:

1) Families wishing to attend school sign a contract agreeing to rigorous social distancing, contact tracing, and health data collection guidelines, to be followed throughout the school year.

2) All staff (and all other persons entering the building) sign the same contract.

3) All staff (and all other persons entering the building) tested weekly.

4) All students and staff required to participate in the Kinsa “WellTogether” program, which has proven to be extremely accurate and reliable. Using a smart thermometer linked to an app, students and staff are screened for symptoms at home before coming to school.

It works like this—

• Students and staff take their temperature & record symptoms at home with Kinsa’s QuickCare™ smart thermometer.

• Anyone who’s symptom-free receives a green light indicating they are cleared to head to school. If a fever or symptoms are detected, a red light indicates they must stay home.

• Students and staff  required to show their green light status before entering a bus or the building. Website here: Kinsa

5) All positives immediately contact-traced and kept in quarantine until tests show no contagion.

6) Student arrival and departure re-configured; masks mandatory outside building.

Stay Still…

…or start dripping. (And, for sure, stay in the shade. )

Thunbergia grandiflora, twined around the neighbor’s obelisk. Who goes deep inside that flower to pollinate? Maybe no one, since the plant is native to Madagascar and places like that.

Here are a few shots taken in the heat of the moment at one of the ball fields at Starin Park.

Stormbogenesis

Have been, for hours, at the point of thunderstorm origin. Lots of wind and rain, and far more thunder than Pax likes.

Earlier, in Cedarburg, with Abby, checking out the neighborhood and houses for sale, in case anyone (not us) might want to move there.

Stag Beetle…

…or Giant Stag Beetle, or Staghorn Beetle (Lucanus elaphus). Found him upside down in a bucket (probably crashed after a nuptial flight.) Somewhat rare and threatened, but not threatening, and rather cute. Grubs live in rotting logs (our back woodpile). Like to be around oaks (three giant white oaks in the back yard).

And, speaking of yards, a pair of wrens (house wrens, I think, (Troglodytes aedon), living in the south side bushes and trees, and very noisy, scolding anyone who walks by.

And here is today’s weed-pull. Walk the beet rows every morning, and what do you see? Beets, of course, but also sneaky weeds, intertwined. It’s not just that they are growing so fast, but also because they are hard to see. I can stand scanning a row for half a minute before, all-of-a-sudden, seeing an interloper.

Speedy Delivery

Pick up Will’s repaired bike in Pewaukee. Deliver to Fox Point. Load roller-coaster. Deliver to Oconomowoc. Keep air conditioning on all the way.

Pleasant in the shade of the back patio this evening.

Warm and Damp

Little thunderstorm in the morning, big one in the evening. In between, drips and drizzles. Definitely growing weather. In fact, a new covid pastime in rural Wisconsin is corn-watching, in which you find a wide shoulder on a quiet country road, pull over there (preferably with lunch or a snack), and spend an hour or two watching corn grow.

In honor of the season:

Let America Be America Again
BY LANGSTON HUGHES

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

 (America never was America to me.)

 Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

 (It never was America to me.)

 O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe…

…O, let America be America again—

The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine—the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

 Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!

Weed Before Ten…

…otherwise…

Beets are looking vigorous.
Pax declined an afternoon walk (too hot and sunny for his liking) so I went for an easy ride.

Summer Exemplar

Couldn’t be any closer to perfect, at least if we are talking about the weather. Sunny with cottony cumulus, some of which tried to pile up to nimbus stage. Low humidity, gentle temperature, pleasant breeze.

Odds and ends. Sue helping with projects in Fox Point. In grocery shopping today (I went at a low traffic time) it seemed that about two thirds of the customers were wearing masks (along with all employees, of course). I steered an obviously wide path around the clueless.

Photo Essay by Will & Mimi

The big ToToTom garden party.

Back in Whitewater for Sue and Jim.

Photos By Family

No text, just some random shots.

Bike Paradise

Manitowish Waters. Miles and miles of trails of all kind—paved, gravel, and…twisty, boulder-strewn, semi-vertical, very skinny mountain bike horrors. Somehow I got on a stretch of one of those…and lived to tell about it. Of course, for Will, Katy, Ab, and Tony, trails like that are cotton candy.

And, later, back at the boathouse, a torrential thunderstorm, aka a duck-drownder.

Morning Rain…

…afternoon sun. Delicious dinner. Also, billiards, model building, hikes, and other things. Random fireworks tonight, much to Pax’s delight.

Photo by Katy

Photo by Mimi

A Little Rain Can’t Dampen Anything

A little sailing, a boat tour of Fence lake chain, billiards, Otrio, wakeboarding( for some of us), and cornbread tamale pie for dinner.