There are still tomatoes in the guest bedroom… We had a frost Friday morning, incidentally the first 15-hour day of the growing season. Friday’s high temperature was 45°F, which is technically warm enough for the nightshades, but they get cranky. Official wisdom says that “irreversible” damage can happen at temperatures below 50° and frost will kill the plant. Saturday’s high was not quite 50°. So…
I did work outside on Saturday. Laid in some pea gravel in front of the herb bed where my mower simply can’t cut the grass because there isn’t enough space to whirl the blade. I’ve been cutting that space with hand shears for five years. I decided that was enough. I also pulled weeds, dead-headed the spent daffodils and hyacinths, chopped the autumn perennials like asters and goldenrod so that they will be bushy and full of flowers, and cut the grass a few days before the end of May — since the grass was taller than all but the tallest dandelions, which had mostly gone to seed anyway. And then it started raining.
It started misting late Saturday evening while I was assembling my grill for the season (hope springs eternal…). It was steady enough that an hour soaked my sweatshirt and froze my fingers. But it was dark by then anyway, so I went inside. Very shortly after that, as I was getting out of the shower, I heard this rushing noise that sounded like a jet engine right overhead. A few seconds later, it was pouring, a wall of water sheeting down. If the tomatoes had somehow survived the frost, that downpour would have flattened them. So I’m very glad I hadn’t managed to plant them out yet.
That shower was brief, lasting maybe twenty minutes. But it never stopped raining. It rained all night Saturday, all day Sunday, and all Sunday night. It had settled back into steady mist by Monday morning, but it did not clear off and warm up until about 4pm. I emptied over 1.5 inches out of the rain gauge on Monday at noon — which missed out on the epic microburst on Saturday because I didn’t put the gauge out for the season until Sunday morning.
Folks, I have never seen the Winooski, the North Branch and the Stevens Branch Rivers all so angry! The Stevens Branch is cresting in a few places. The North Branch is running over the reservoir spillway. All of them are flowing so fast you can watch the banks erode in real time. I would not put a boat in any of those streams right now. And apparently fishing sucks.
On my walk last night, I ran into a guy walking up the hill from the river carrying a rod and a cooler. I asked how the day went and he just shook his head and showed me an empty cooler. If I were a fish, I would be hunkered down in the deepest pool I could find. Anywhere near the surface and you’d be pummeled with debris. Truthfully, I wouldn’t have tried fishing… but sometimes you just have to sit on a riverbank and toss a line into the water. Not so much to catch fish… But just to think… or not think…
And right now, there’s such a lot to not think about. The war in Iran is going on three months now with no exit in sight. If anything, Israel has ratcheted up the destruction and murder in Lebanon — which, to be clear, must end before Iran agrees to anything that might open the Strait of Hormuz. Then, in a move of consummate stupidity, the orange man-baby declared that all the Gulf States should normalize relations with Israel as a precondition to ending this war that he and Netanyahu started. Like that’s a thing that will happen…
Meanwhile, India, the Philippines, and South Korea are all rationing fuel. And China is reigning in exports and production for export, meaning the global market’s manufacturing engine is slowing down. Also, after that disastrous US billionaire “state” visit, China is now openly moving to take over Taiwan, causing even more economic chaos. (Among other tensions…) All indications are that the planet has crossed the economic implosion tipping point. By now, markets are being buoyed up by nothing more than 2am [Un]Truth Social posts. This while we’re being forced to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on Trumpian grift in this country, while tens of millions of people have to choose between food and transportation. Those who must drive to get food are just hosed…
There’s renewed hand wringing over the weakening AMOC, which seems to be on track to collapse by 2050… Words cannot describe how bad that will be… There’s also the worst El Niño in history hovering over the eastern Pacific, setting the planet up for yet another hottest year ever. And some strange blob of high pressure in the Atlantic is causing record drought all across the normally very humid Southeast US. Literally the entire state of Alabama is in extreme drought.
Meanwhile, there was a hantavirus scare a couple weeks ago, and now ebola is raging through Africa, killing hundreds — a situation exacerbated by the dimwitted US decision to gut foreign aid last year, meaning vaccines are in short supply. And then on this side of the planet, Trump is attempting to overthrow the Cuban government by starving the people. Because of course that’s going to generate the will to rise up and revolt… Instead there are people dying because there is no power for water treatment, for cooking, for refrigeration, and for medical procedures ranging from dialysis to cancer surgery. I’m sure goodwill toward the US is growing by the day…
And then there’s this petrochemical tank in Orange County, California, that is heating up and leaking. Over 50,000 people have been evacuated out of the densely populated area around it. Emergency workers are spraying the tank with water round the clock in an attempt to cool the reacting chemicals down and lower the pressure inside the tank. But it doesn’t seem to be working. The temperatures are still steadily rising. It very likely is going to explode, sending deadly chemicals into the air for miles around. So there goes Garden Grove… Should mention that parts of Disneyland are not comfortably outside the blast zone, if this thing should blow…
So there’s all that… Can’t fault the guy for going fishing…
I put on my headphones and went for a walk… Hammock has a new album out, you know… It’s not all darkness… yet…
Meanwhile…
The un-jungling of my property is coming along nicely. I already have more plans than will fit. But the most amazing thing? I can see through it now.
Here are some more pictures of the garden this week…
There has even been a positive development on the groundhog front… apart from the destruction of habitat, that is… There was a fat one taking up residence under my front porch — even after I had sealed all the holes… damn rodent dug deeper and ripped off part of the board I had nailed up. However…
I went out to do something on the porch on Sunday evening, and the hog was plopped in the half-barrel planter that I had just filled with petunias. I shrieked and it flopped gracelessly out of the planter and scuttled around the house. I muttered darkly but shrugged it off, chalking it up to evidence that I absolutely needed to get the wire mesh on the base of the house as soon as possible. Apart from garden damage, rodent digging also undermines foundations. My back porch is already leaning into a former rodent complex… don’t want the front porch to lean the other way. Might just tear the house apart. (OK, not really, but you get the idea…)
Anyway, I went inside to get a step stool. I was inside for maybe two minutes tops. But when I came out, there was Mama Fox from the den behind the garage. And she had the fat groundhog hanging limp from her jaws!
Is it wrong of me to have cheered?…
So maybe there is a reprieve for the moment… long enough for me to get the wire mesh up anyway. And then maybe there won’t be anywhere to hide from Mama Fox.
There are also rumors of a Mama Bear with two cubs in the neighborhood… I can only hope…
©Elizabeth Anker 2026
By My Solitary Hearth 