cooler

yesterday it was 100+ degrees F and today it is 63 degrees: roughly 40 degrees cooler

and it is raining, heavily off and on, now just sprinkling

a while ago i thought i'd try opening the window and shutting off the A/C so i don't have to sit in here with a window A/C running all the time, but the poor nice breeze couldn't keep up with the humidity and big monitors in here, so now the A/C is back on

short-lived fantasy

Heat Cold

it has finally happened what I knew would eventually happen in the later part of the summer.

i have come to be annoyed with the heat and i start to fancy that i smell the sharp smell of freezing when you step outside in the morning, the lasting taste of coffee in your mouth. it's as if you can taste the bermuda grass going dormant on the short breezes that confront your face. i'm ready for sweaters again. or sometimes i imagine that i'm sitting in a dank room, not dark, but with just a desk lamp on or something, wearing a sweater, and seeing out a window a foggy cold scene, and hearing downstairs the sounds of someone listening to the NPR all things considered theme.

in other matters i've randomly started listening to (some of) Madonna (i.e. some music she made when she was Madonna, not whatever her name is now, or at least I think i remember hearing that she calls herself something else these days). One day here at work there was a playlist file on the desktop of one of the computers here, so I played it, listened to it a couple of times that day, and am listening to it now. funny how things like that just happen.

Now it's been two whole weeks since harvest ended. this does not seem to be a long time, just as the general concept two-weeks does not really seem to be a long time, nevertheless the reality seems to be a long time. It is not clear, however, why this seems to be a long time. I think perhaps it could be because the last two weeks have been marked by some frustration at work since I've been learning PHP and using it to interface with MySQL to create a web database application for Tabor. Two weeks ago I didn't even really know what either of those things were, so i've been cramming my brain with all this new stuff, learning how to create an authentication system for users of the database to log into, etc. Turns out it's not really that difficult, but learning all of this in a short time is rather draining.

Today went for a walk out at the farm. Two weeks since harvest. I look at the fields where wheat once stood to see bright patches of weeds growing up above the stubble. And other fields: already burned and worked under, to begin a new cycle: till, sow, grow, reap. It makes me tired to think of all the cycles that have been completed in the span of existence. I mean, to think of all of this history, makes one realize the insignificance of one completion of the cycle; in this sense I find it tiresome. Complete the cycle so that another will begin: so that we can live of course, but this is yet another cycle.

As I walked down the pasture road that is shown in one of the first few pictures I posted a while ago, I came to a field of milo (i.e. sorghum). And since the leaves of milo are much larger than the leaves of wheat, the sound is much more like lots of papers clapping together in the wind as opposed to the finer texture of the hush of the sound of wheat in the wind.

The stalks are growing large with fresh heads beginning to pop out in some places. The smell is sweet when this happens so that when you walk by you are hit by the wind, sun, smell, and sound of this field, all at once, yet silently, alone, out there.

I was not walking in this field but rather alongside an old fence row of a pasture which borders this field of milo. During harvest there were winrows in this pasture, also giving off their smell as they sat baking in the hot sun. During harvest Jess mentioned how she likes the word 'winrow.' I hadn't thought much about that word other than that when I was younger I remember being confused how to say it, for I was uncertain wheather it was 'winrow' or 'windrow'. Now, looking at Dictionary.com I see that it is apparently both, 'winrow' is a contraction for 'windrow.' So I guess it whould be spelt "win'row" if you use the contracted form.

These win'rows have been baled and arranged in rows since the end of harvest. So now the pasture looks stark, but decidedly not dead since the grass doesn't waste any time in starting growing again.

I wanted to say more about the milo, how it grows more quickly than the wheat, and how this makes me like it better than the wheat. But nothing seems to come to mind to say other than just that.

Another thing which caught my thought today was how the harvest always seems so dreadfully looming inevitably there before it comes, but now I find myself two weeks past it and it seems almost pitiful what's left of it: far from its original splendor is just the rotting stalks in the fields.

Cherries!

Cherries!,
originally uploaded by dp2005_.

I think I mentioned something about picking cherries a long time ago (it seems) so here is a picture of the results of picking those cherries.