Dahlia Messenger from the Moon, 2017?

We had a blackout today which was explained as “ animal interference.” Had a squirrel chewed a wire, albeit a very important wire? Had a raccoon got trapped inside a transmitter, or a bird? Had a fox simply had enough, and pulled the switch?

It is kind of marvelous that an animal can control our lives. I don’t mean rats or fleas and the plague , but just a little outrage to throw us off kilter. We perhaps need a reset. A time out that isn’t pandemic-related.

The heron has reappeared.  It probably never went away, but when I do not see it in the mornings, I feel it is hiding until the tourists lessen.  This is my sense that seasons are changing, though in fact we are not at midway in this last hot month of summer.  And it has been hot, with an apalling lack of rain.  

Since March, we have been somewhat sequestered, probably less than strictly useful or healthy.   With summer tourism, coronavirus has risen as it must.  No one wears masks at the beach, which I guess is becuase of the idea that open spaces are safe.  Yet the common passageways, where strangers might pass one another are vulnerable points.  

I observe my annoyances and irritation, bury myself in books.  I have read some ninety novels in isolation, which hardly seems possible.  Somewhere thruways, detective stories set in the nineteenth century, or in the thirteenth.  As always, the hummingbirds provide diversion ad delight, and always flit away before I can reach for my camera.  

The mourning doves–have I yet said?–are once agin nesting, incubating two brand new eggs, their third brood.  This time, they too have sequestered themselves under some chairs, near a Tupperware box full of gardening tools.  I worry the space will be too small, but they must know what they are doing.

Mornings provide relief from the heat.  A change is coming, isn’t it?