Dire Warning

I go ahead and take the truck down, severe weather later and I need to get to town tomorrow. Take the long-handled shovel with me, and on the walk back up make some slight adjustments in the grader ditch. Not that I can control the flow of water, but I can at least indicate my preference. Because of the camber the ditch is actually more open to suggestion. The catchment at the top culvert has self-cleaned, and I judge the system to be just fine against anything but an extreme weather event. All day Sunday the power kept cutting out, then the phone was out (for 15 hours) but, still most of the extreme weather missed, then last night, all hell broke loose: rolling thunder, close lightning strikes, hail, then hard rain, and inch in an hour. I got up and harvested some rain. Walked down this morning in that clean ozone haze. Napp, at the spillway, running hard, smashing into the curb at the bottom. I'm early, so I stop and walk over; the sound and vibration rattle my teeth. Nice drive in, the smells are peaking, a kind of minty green thing, with overtones of new asphalt. Blackberry petals blowing everywhere, as the fruit sets. This could be a big blackberry year. Stop for my coffee and scone and flirt with the girls at Market Street. At the museum it looks like a young war happened over the weekend. Really a mess. When Pegi gets in she calls Leo to help me. He's 20, strong, and works hard. Before he gets there, I spend an hour on the garbage. A full meal served, so lots of food trash, and the cans are overloaded, I have to separate out things, in order to even be able to lift the bags. Unbelievable amounts of trash, six 55 gallon bags. And the floor, I can barely express my anguish. Part of the decoration was silk rose petals on all the tables, and, of course, they were all on the floor. We had to put away 100 chairs and thirty tables before we could even address that. Silk rose petals are a lot like feathers, from the janitor's point of view. In that class of things that are so light, that when you sweep them, they become airborne, and fly across the broom. Makes sweeping difficult. And it was a non-liquor, Candy Wedding. I mention that because I didn't know they existed; where everyone drinks soda and eats candy. There were cute little bags, so people could take candy home. So there's a lot of candy on the floor too. I scrape it out of the grout joints with my pocketknife and Leo sweeps it into piles. He swears he knows how to mop and I entrust that task to him. Understand that I almost never let anyone else mop my floors, but I had some other things to do. He mops barefoot, which is a nice touch, but his stroke is a bit jerky, and I don't have time for the Grace Lecture. Point is, we get it done. Sometimes, that's all that matters. I have to warn myself again, where we are, exactly. Striking one show and setting up another. A matter of course. Billy, at the pub, thought the ribs were very good, but was curious about the sauce. What can I say, the sauce may well live beyond me, a life of its own. I tap on the keyboard, as if I might be saying something, but it's nothing, really. A fucking Whip-O-Will, late at night.