It's supposed to cool off tonight after a cold front pushes through and much drier air. It's only gonna get up into the mid-eighties with cool nights for sleeping. I've been thinking about getting some more sleep than I've been getting. The usual amount of time I sleep at night is about six hours, but I've taken to allowing myself to go back to sleep as many times as I can. It's like little cat naps I take after I've done the lion's share of sleeping just before.
We got some needed rain night before last. As much as two inches (5.08 cm) of rain was accompanied by lots of lightning and thunder. Dragons. The electric storms like what came through here sporadically the other night is what some Oriental cultures call dragons. Lightning is the fire they spit forth and the crop-destroying winds are generated by their wings flapping. Dragons! They'll huff and puff and blow your house down. I pretty much slept through the entire affair, but did hear the hard rain hitting the roof above my head. Rain. The blessings of heaven.
I walked outside a while ago. Mostly just to get away from the computer. The new fig trees are doing better. The one I bought that came from a commercial grower was having some problems and looked like might be dying. I've been watering it more and beating on the bamboo stobs I put around it to drive the moles off. This plant lies low to the ground compared with my old fig tree. I thought it was the same variety as the old one when I bought it, but maybe not.
There are a few full-grown figs on that little ol' bush already, and they're bigger than the fruit on my old tree. They might even get bigger still, but I guess time will tell. I want it to get a good root mass developed so it can survive. The one cutting I put out last winter that survived grew two more leaves and a couple of buds to replace the one leaf that got knocked off by a hard rain.
My old fig tree I planted twenty years ago got hurt bad by the late hard frost that killed it back last Spring. It's made up for it this year. The new growth is phenomenal. Some of the leaves on it are bigger than my head, and there's lots of fruit coming in. They're only about as big as the tip of my little finger, so it'll be another 3-4 weeks before they start ripening. That's the other difference between my old brown turkey fig tree and the commercial one I bought. The fruit matures earlier on the new tree.
I like that. The only time I eat figs is when they're ripe on the tree. By the time me, and the birds, and the bugs have eat our fill, I've usually had a bait of 'em. I might oughta try to save some by drying them or preserving them by canning, but I'm not that kind of guy. Death always comes unexpected.
I enjoy drawing people out of their shell. Sometime we're both surprised by the skeletons that come tumbling out of the closet. Ungrateful wretches. They hardly ever say thank you, and on the contrary, fill the air with threats of mumbo jumbo. That makes me quiver and shake and beg them not to throw me into the briar patch. Maybe that's how you do it when you're born in the Year of the Rabbit.
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
