July 14, 2012 Humid at 70 Degrees

Everyone's T-shirts are wet.  It has rained every night for a week.  Trumpet Vine (Campsis radicans) decorates all the fences along the way with its orange trumpet flowers. There was  a trumpet vine in the corner of the stone garage and the fence of my childhood home.  My mother said that if a black cloud came up from the direction over the garage then we would have rain.  The fence separated our yard from that of the Archers, an older couple who were the only people in town to employ a liveried butler.  Mrs. Archer was deathly afraid of our gray Persian cat, Madame Overpuss.  One day, Madame Overpuss lay dead on our side of the fence next to a dinner of meat laced with ground glass.
That was when we, my brother and sister and I, began to crawl out our second floor window onto the flat roof and spy on the Archer's butler.  We could see him carefully washing Mr. Archer's many used whiskey glasses at the sink beyond the lighted window.
We told each other fantasies of how the butler had murdered Mrs. Archer, usually by serving her a pork chop laced with ground glass. 
That was long ago now.

July 12, 2012 Keys to the Past

I found a set of car keys on the trail and later a policeman found yet another set, this one to a black Audi. Both runners got their keys back and drove away with their dogs.  I keep my keys attached to my clothes with a big safety pin from the Rock Hill YMCA.  The pin has the number of the wire basket they would give you to keep your clothes in while you swam.  I remember walking three blocks to the Y at 2:00 pm with my neighbor, Reedy Montgomery in the summer. I was about 12 years old.
 A man dressed in dark shirt, heavy long pants, curly hair and granny glasses, toting a large backpack passed me saying,"I stopped smoking in October and gained 52 pounds.  I have never weighed this much." 
"Keep on walking." I shouted as he passed on by, opened the door of a gold Mercedes, tossed in his pack, got in and disappeared into the traffic.
Along a stretch of old railroad tracks, large colonies of cathedral like Common Mullein (Verbascum thapsus, related to the snapdragon) is flowering yellow blossoms, some 6 feet tall.  I found this interesting note in my wildflower fieldbook:
"...an introduced biennial with very velvety leaves, it has long been used for many purposes.  Roman soldiers are said to have dipped the stalks in grease for use as torches.  The leaves are still used as wicks in some areas.  Indians lined their mocassins with the leaves to keep out the cold, and colonists used them in their stockings for the same purpose.  A tea made from the leaves was used to treat colds, and the flowers and roots were employed to treat various ailments from earaches to croup.  The leaves are sometimes applied to the skin to sooth sunburn and other inflammations."

July 11, 2012 Singing in the Rain

It rained all night and we walked for a while and then it began to rain again and we kept on going.
The crape myrtles are so heavy with blossoms and rain that they are bent nearly to the ground.
Ripe persimmons have been knocked out of the tree.  Boofa wanted to attack a black poodle and a weimaraner.  I guess he will protect me in case of a poodle and weimaraner attack.
8 miles in the cool morning before work.

July 8, 2012 Breaking the Six Mile Barrier

The heat wave continues. Certainly you could cook eggs on the sidewalk, but walking at daylight is good.  Boofa and I walked 8 miles today by doubling back on the rail trail.  We saw another rabbit, a smaller brown one that hopped to and fro and ran into the bushes.  The great elk horn shaped clusters of sumac are blooming red and brown.  Driving home, I saw men in their wife-beater undershirts sitting on porches drinking giant glasses of iced tea. Late in the day, the thunder rumbled and only a few drops fell.  I am nursing along some spouts of lemon grass I bought from the farmer's market.  I am not sure how to grow them, but I chop them up and stir fry a teaspoon full with the onions and veggies in a rice stir fry.  Tuesday, the heat is supposed to break.  So say the weathermen.

July 7, 2012 Rabbits and Squirrels on the Trail

Boofa has the DNA of a hunting dog.  We approached a beautiful brown Albrecht Durer rabbit still as stone (or as Roy Blount, Jr. would suggest in elevating a traditional southern fruit) still as a
watermelon.  There are squirrels too, scampering everywhere, but we move on.  Today I notice that there is a funeral home, complete with six gleaming white heares, just beside the bicycle store with the backs of the buildings facing the trail.  I don't know if it has sprung up overnight like a poison mushroom or if it was always there.  The bicycle store has a walking and riding ramp built out the back and onto the trail for people to come and go.  Fortunately, the funeral home does not.

It is already 80 degrees at 8:00 am when we leave to go to the farmer's market.  A string band is moving from the sun into the shade. Vendors are selling vegetables, fruits, baked goods and essential oil soaps under canopies.  There is even a huge man in a stetson with his son from a ranch selling hormone and antibiotic free beef and pork.  I buy  better boy tomatoes and a bar of mint lavender soap.

And when I get home I make an old fashioned tomato sandwich out of a better boy tomato, white bread and mayonaise.  Oh yes, and salt, that's all.  It is so good.  It is the food of my childhood.

July 5, 2012 The Heat Goes On

Even in the early morning, it is hot to walk.  Every day the temperature breaks the record. We met the lady who walks 8 miles a day and she had begun her walk at 6:20 am.
Peter and I were married on July 5,  1966 in the Catholic Church in New Delhi, India.  It was also a very hot day.  We spent the night in the International Hotel where the Beatles had stayed the year before and then the next night we rode the train to the hill station of Mussori in the Himalayas.  When the clouds parted, you could see Anna Purna.
For the wedding, I wore a white hand woven short dress with mirrors embroidered into it and a yellow glass bracelet that a seller had massaged onto my arm in the bazaar.  I couldn't get it off until I tripped and fell on my honeymoon and it broke.  In Mussori, we met a fortune teller who told Peter that he would be a king and live by a river.

July 1, 2012 We're Having a Heat Wave

The walkers were out this morning by 7:00 am.  A bow legged man passed by  me wiping his neck with a towel, "It's ghastly, isn't it?" he said.  By afternoon, it was 107 degrees, the hottest it has ever been here in recorded history.  And the cicadas knew it. They are here and they are blasting their song.  In the night, violent thunder erupted breaking the red hot bowl of the sky and releasing blessed cool rain with hail and fallen trees.