Summer balance

I love this time of year. There is the slight hint of Fall in the air, but the days are still warm... if not hot. In the morning my meditation happens when the moon is bright, some stars still shine, and dawn is just etching the darkness with color and light. The stillness is only broken by the conversation between two Screech Owls or the bass call of a Great Horned Owl. Occasionally, the darkness of a bat shows against the almost-darkness of the dawn. Then a bird of the morning calls out... sometimes it is a dove or a Towhee or some other bird calling out its territory... or just to let the world know that it is alive. I really love the stillness of morning before the wind moves or the dawn brings too much detail to light.

Of course, it is great that we harvest the fruits and vegetables. The two-year old peach tree brought forth 13 peaches this year! They are gone. The squash and pumpkins haven't been doing well. They have produced a lot of leaves, but they are blighted by the powdery mildew. I didn't even know what it was until a friend showed up and showed it to me. Now I see that it is spread throughout the whole crop. We'll see what happens next. We're still getting squash and pumpkins.

The deer have also been well-fed on squash (they take a few bites and move on), almond tree leaves, cherry tree leaves, pear tree leaves, not to mention apples off our favorite apple trees.

It has also been a challenging year for water. Our well and reserve tank have gone dry. One time due my fault- left the irrigation on. But the others are still a mystery. We've taken to being really careful about water and it may mean that some of the vegetables don't make it. We are at the cusp of the rainy season. It is still reaching up close to 90 degrees and dropping into the upper 40's. So we will see when the well recharges. Hopefully soon.

I was walking along our creek about 10 days ago and we have a place where the water drops about 5 feet into a pool. There was still a little water pooling and probably 4-5 inches of water. As I looked at the water, something moved... it actually swam. It was so muddy it took a few minutes to reveal a fish! The next day a friend visited, we looked at it and then looked online to identify this 6 inch swimmer. The closest we came was a Cuthroat Trout! How in the world did that happen? The water was muddy and murky and there couldn't have been much oxygen. The water went away a few days later and the fish disappeared. Maybe the raccoons got it.

There is a fine line between when you intervene and when you let natural processes take place. We are applying an herbicide to poison oak since I react so strongly to it. We put out traps for the yellow jackets because Susan reacts so badly to them. It is about taking care of ourselves, but when do we just accept that there are things that are going to happen to us? When do we just let natural processes take their natural course? We can't protect ourselves from everything. I was tempted to scoop up the fish and release it in a stream nearby, but instead decided to add water to the pool. Didn't work.

We all have to take care of the land and the people. Sometimes we need to intervene and sometimes let things happened. I've stopped looking for the operating manual and know that I do the best I can in the moment.