mumma yaga

 July 22, 2023 Wonderful skies. Sometimes the clouds come into our meadow.  Mid-July, but this seems to be a strange summer! It has been as hot and humid, here in the Green Mountains, as July in Toronto, for a day or two, then raining and raining on the rest. In the news there are extreme heat and massive floods all over the world. It feels apocalyptic! There is war and political strife everywhere, as well! How long can we go on in crisis mode like this! Certainly, we have collectively decided that the covid pandemic is over! No-one is masking, many public places have ceased to provide hand-sanitizing, and covid has been largely dropped from the headlines. There is some news about long covid, but it seems that some countries are ignoring the problem, while no-one but doctors and scientists have begun to act on it. Governments should be putting aside funds for the future. It may hit us hard when the full impact strikes health care and employment.  Has it always been like this, with war,

 July 11, 2023 The ridge stream in flood. Is it ever going to stop? I am thinking about Noah and about forty days of this rain. I love weather events. I realize that it is sometimes a disaster situation, and that is not good. But it is exciting to see nature unbound, caring not for frail humans, being wild. It reminds me that we are small and the world is big.  I emptied my rain gauge at almost 100 mm; glad I did, because it would have over-flowed. That was after 16 hours. We received another 83 mm by this eleven this morning. Almost seven inches in thirty-six hours.            This is not the normal rain we see in southern Ontario and Quebec. Even in Vancouver, it does not usually come down this hard for so long, though I have seen it rain for weeks on end there, just drizzling as if it's a permanent part of the air. England sees long days of such steady and heavy rain, hours and hours sometimes. ("If the sun don't come, you get a tan from standing in the English rain.&qu

 July 6, 23 The stash. I have a chocolate stash. I have had one for thirty-two years. When the children were little it was hidden, but once they became adults I moved it to a known location and it was available for everyone. It was understood however that it must not be allowed to get low, so I was to be notified when it was getting so. There have been other favorite treats that also had to be reported or replaced when they were low, because it was important to me to have them available at all times. (For instance, chocolate stick ice cream, a Loblaws'  PC brand of ice cream whose real name I don't remember but is white ice cream with sticks of dark chocolate in it.)  The inception of the chocolate stash is a chapter in my food journey. I am sure that we all, at some time in our lives, have dealt with food restrictions. It might be a diet to lose weight, or to help with our health, or for money reasons. I remember clearly the food restrictions of my childhood. We were five chil