June 24, 2026
Welcome to Summer, 2026! The solstice
is in our rearview mirrors, the longest day is behind us, and now we begin our
long crawl back down from the summit of that mountain. I prefer the days with
lots of sunlight to the days when darkness lasts until breakfast and then falls
again before supper. But time has its own agenda, and really, the best we can
do is enjoy what we can of each day as it comes.
This has certainly been the
year for sports so far, hasn’t it? On thing I have noticed this year is that
the fans of these various sporting events are the all-in sort. Humans crave to
be a part of something bigger than themselves. It’s in our nature. But this
year the fan frenzy has reached next level fever-pitch.
Dancing and screaming at the
top of one’s lungs, giving one’s all in order to party hardy (or hearty), would
be an excellent way to burn off any strong negative emotions smoldering under the
rug, wouldn’t it?
We’ve had a great deal of rain
over the last couple of weeks. Enough that there’s been no need to water the
gardens. I’m not going to complain. I recall the summer of 2023. That, too, was
a summer when little water was needed from the garden hose. And that was also
the year of the bumper crops—green beans, yes, but the tomatoes! Oh, the
tomatoes! Big, luscious and plentiful.
I’m salivating just thinking
about the possibility of an encore to that summer. There’s a dish I like to
make—stuffed tomato casserole—that begs for nice big Beefsteaks. I read several
recipes then just came up with my own. It’s the one thing I really look forward
to in the summer. And it was a dish I couldn’t make last year, because our crop
didn’t cooperate.
My fingers are crossed for
this year.
We now have sod in the area
where our lawn was torn up for the water main work last year. Then, late last
week, the equipment and the crews arrived, their goal to tear up the new road
laid in the intersection—the corner to the south of our house. They’d done a
really poor job laying asphalt in the fall, and by spring there was already the
beginning of a pothole. So for the next little while, we are destined to listen
to the sound of roadwork once more.
But not, apparently, today.
After this intersection has
been completed, the concrete crew will return to fix the curb on our side of
that intersection and then—Please, God—they will install a step or two so that
I will finally be able to walk a straight line from the bottom of my porch to
the road. When I spoke to the project manager at the end of May, he told me
that I should see that crew by the end of June.
I remain hopeful.
It’s sometimes really
difficult to let those close to me have their little rants about “they should
do this or they should have done that”. Maybe they should. But they didn’t. I
called, I discussed, and now I will wait and see. If I’m still left with the
cliff from my lawn to the concrete pad they installed by the second week of
July, I’ll call again.
I’m trying very hard to give
patience a chance.
Even when it comes to the
matter of my surgical recovery. Yes, today I am at the keyboard, composing this
essay. Yes, I am using my right hand as well as my left. But I won’t work for
very long. Soon, I will retreat to my recliner with my iPad. It’s an easy
matter to use my foam whatever it’s called to rest the device upon. And I will
swipe pages, as I read, with my left hand.
My right will just lay there
and look pretty while, open to the air, my wound heals, little by little.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
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