Beltane Healing Moon
A new seasonal event. Pine pollen gathers on the black surface of our driveway leaving yellow rings where water gathers in the driveway’s low spots. Sweep your hand across a piece of our Stickley furniture, palms and fingers come up yellow. We have only cross ventilation for cooling. Shake a branch of the ponderosa and a yellow cloud fills the air. All about sex of course. No wonder it’s beautiful.
Into Denver last night to check on Jon’s garden. Jon, Jen, Ruth and Gabe are in Chicago for father’s day, visiting Jen’s grandfather and grandmother, both great-grandparents. Her grandfather is 96 or so and his wife around the same age. Barb, Jen’s mom, flew out because her mom fell and broke a hip. She’s headed to a nursing home. error correction: Kate says Barb’s mother has a hair line fracture of the pelvis.
Jon grows quite a garden. He has grapes and currants, potatoes and herbs, tomatoes and carrots, peppers, strawberries and onions. Being a gardener of the arid west he has a drip irrigation system which delivers small bursts of water, around two minutes worth, to each plant via a plastic line connected to a small plastic stake with a watering head. Before they left he positioned garden furniture over his more delicate plants because hail can be a problem.
My job is to make sure the irrigation system works, then to make sure that none of the watering heads malfunction and finally to watch plants that might wilt in the heat. There are two main concerns, one is for the health of the plants, but the second is to make the sprinkler system doesn’t send them into another tier of water pricing by running too long. Colorado is not California, but water, especially municipal water, is still a precious resource and priced accordingly.
