Hybridization in Everyday Ramblings

Late dahlias and tomatoes. I took my tomato plants down on Saturday. While there was still some green fruit. It was clear they were not going to ripen. The cosmos are still blooming cheerfully, and I couldn’t bring myself to take those plants down quite yet. With the wind and the rain there is a carpet of beautiful red leaves from the Oregon Maples out there.

We had quite the downpour on Monday, one of those climate change flooding in fifteen minutes it rained so hard things. I admit it was pretty scary. It brought down a lot of leaves.

There have been no encounters with mentally ill folks since Friday and I have been out and about. It is not that I don’t see folks that are suffering every time I am out now but most times, I don’t have direct contact with them. We have a quite robust bottle and can return law here and this provides employment for quite an army of scavengers.

Sometimes I look out my kitchen window and will see two or three guys on their rounds with their big plastic bags after going through everyone’s trash. There is one sharp featured guy that is not a visible drug addict and has a home and rain gear that has been doing the rounds in this area since before the pandemic. He usually walks by about 8:30 AM, often walking in the street, talking to himself.

He gets on the bus sometimes and buys sandwiches at the grocery I go to. Like a postal delivery person, he has a route. A big one. The guy does not have any fat visible on him. He does not make eye contact and I have never talked to him.

I wonder often what his life is like. What he does when he is not doing his job picking through trash for recyclables. What his name is. If he recognizes me. What would he do if he were to get sick. Does he have family. Was he out in the downpour.

He is rarely seen in the afternoon but that is possibly more because I am not out then, than he is. He wears an invisible cloak of unapproachability.

We are having a stunning day, blue blue skies, colorful trees, clean clear air.

Walt asked Friday for a poem or a short essay on what we do in our daily life to manage dealing with horrific news. (The topic we wandered through at coffee Thursday.) And there is certainly plenty of that to go around.

He asked. I wrote a poem. He liked it, he shared it. That was a small way to manage. It has been a long time since anyone has pushed me to write on anything like a regular schedule and the process does help offer a space to think things through and make things.

You can find the link here. There is lots of other good stuff in there too.

I have been catching up on things I was procrastinating on and getting through them helps set the mind at ease. It is hard not to despair though, the news is so bad, one wonders of humans have made any progress at all in the last 3,000 years.

I guess we are better at killing each other. If you can call that progress.
That and hybridizing flowers.

If you don’t mind I will focus on the flowers, okay?
Do you think if we did this as humans we might be less likely to kill each other?

Last updated October 18, 2023