Look. The Language Here Tonight Reflects My Mood. You Have Been Warned

 

The wild phlox has started blooming and that's always a happy sight for me but I seem to have a powdery mildew situation going on here in my yard. It started a few years ago with some plants I'd bought at a very well-regarded nursery that I'd potted up and put on the porch and it seems to have spread to whatever is vulnerable to it, the phlox being one of those things. It's sort of crept up on me and is now doing what every invasive thing in this yard does which is to quickly get beyond my control. I realize I should prune back everything that has it and also spray the leaves (both sides!) with a mixture of something like baking soda, Dawn dish soap, and neem oil but Lord have mercy- that would be a lot of work. And I'm sure that one application of the preparation would not get the job done. I'm really not seeing any on the porch plants now which is good but it's going pretty strong in the little kitchen garden area, that area you see above which is next to the kitchen garden, and also along the fence in front of the house where it's showing up on the phlox I've planted there along with the fire spike I've also planted. 

And really, it's too damn hot outside to do any sort of yard work as far as I'm concerned. I spent another hour in the garden picking beans and once again, I wasn't sure I was going to make it. Turned out I really needed a second basket but the thought of walking ALL THE WAY back to the house which is really not far at all was simply too much and I started stashing beans in my pockets. I was hoping I'd get whatever I picked today and what was in the refrigerator canned this afternoon but by the time I'd snapped the new guys, it was too late to start that project. In my opinion, at least. I have about eight pounds of snapped beans to pressure can and I think that'll probably just about equate to another seven quarts or so. 
While I snapped, I finished watching a movie I started yesterday which I've been meaning to see since it came out in 2018, "Green Book" which is a story based on true facts about a Black pianist named Don Shirley and his driver and body guard, an Italian American bouncer named Frank Tony-Lip Vallelonga when Shirley did a concert tour in the deep south in 1962. The movie won a lot of awards including the Academy Award for Best Picture. I don't know why I'd never watched it. "The Green Book" refers to a publication called The Negro Motorist Green Book which was published from the 1930's through the 1960's when segregation was still very much in force and was full of information regarding where Black travelers could find overnight accommodations as well as places to eat. And so forth. 
The movie was not bad although I felt there were a lot of tropes happening but supposedly, it was written based on interviews with Shirley and Vallelonga who became friends on the road and remained lifelong friends, literally until their deaths. It gave a very good picture of what it was like for a Black person to try and just survive on the road in the south and a few of the things that could and did happen during such a trip. And I cried at the very end. Not a whole lot, but I did cry, sitting there on the couch with a bowl of green beans in my lap. 
The truth is, people flat out died just trying to get a meal or taking a piss if their color was the wrong one in certain areas of the country and I can't help but think of how the very same things are happening now, especially with immigrants who fit the profile of being "illegal" or "criminals" or "drug mules."
Whatever. 
Fuck ICE. Fuck racial prejudice. Fuck ignorance and hatred and the inability to feel the least bit of empathy. 
I could go on all night. 
I won't. 

I've been in a bit of a mood today anyway and a little while ago I was contemplating this and wondering why and thought to myself that it almost feels like being premenstrual although I will never be anything but post, post, post menstrual for the rest of my life and then I remembered that due to the fact that the doctor's office which prescribes my hormones is once again being incompetent when it comes to renewing my prescription, I've been taking half my regular dosage so as not to run out entirely before they get their shit together and that may explain things.
Or, I could just be in a bitchy mood for no apparent reason. 
But I'm also absolutely ready to get rid of half, at least, of the stuff in my house from books to tchotchkes, whether on shelves or hanging on walls or in closets. I feel weighed down and burdened by all of it and all of it needs cleaning and dusting and I have no desire to do any of that. Even though I did a bit of a weeding in the library within the last year (or so, to be honest), I still have books in there I've never read and am never going to read or have read and will never read again and not all of the children's books are books that have any real emotional meaning to me or any sort of real value in any way and they're just sitting there, collecting dust and all of the words within them are not doing me a bit of good. There's just clutter everywhere and why is it so damn hard for me to let it go? 
I guess I need to read that book about Swedish death cleaning or something. Look- I have things stashed away that I really have no idea where they came from or how I got them. Or why in hell I kept them. Did someone make me this scratchy shawl? Surely I did not buy it. It must have some meaning, some history which once was important to me but fuck if I can remember what that was. 

But it's all so overwhelming. 
I do not think I'm a hoarder but I know I have some of a hoarder's traits. I hold on to things that there is no way I'll ever need or use again. I do not like this aspect of my personality and I do not like living with the results of it. And let us not forget that my husband is even worse than I am in some ways, happily acquiring things all the time that he dreams he will be using in future projects while there are enough unfinished projects in that garage to last a lifetime. And what the hell is a lifetime at this point in our lives? 

And this is where I am today. Despairing over powdery mildew and the lack of rain and the heat and the mess and the clutter and the weird pain in my left leg and my seeming inability to make myself exercise in any sort of regular way and the mildew which is not powdery and on plants but is in my house (and please do not go into a a treatise about how dangerous mold and mildew are, just don't) and how badly my refrigerator needs cleaning out and how I hardly have a leg to stand on when it comes to mentioning Mr. Moon not finishing projects because I am probably five times worse than he is when it comes to that and...oh yeah, also things like the East Wing on the White House being reduced to rubble and fucking cage fighting (whatever the fuck that really is) on the White House lawn with ads for various products stamped all over that horrid, trashy cage thing and millions being spent on gilding horses (not to be confused with gelding horses) and the 39 times Trump has insisted that we are THAT close to signing an agreement with Iran and people dying in what are essentially concentration camps with no visible hope of any sort of legal resolution and Elon Musk becoming a trillionaire and the lies and deceit and outright theft from the American people while the richest bastards in the world get their tax rates lowered and yet groceries and gas are unaffordable to the masses and let's not even talk about health care. 

Hormones or just trying to shift my fears and anxieties and rage from what's going on in this country to something I actually do have some control over like all the shit hanging on my walls? 
Theoretically.

Meanwhile, Mr. Moon is on his way home. From what I gather it wasn't the best day of fishing but at least he was out on the sea with his line in the water rather than being in a rehab facility trying to make a friend understand why he needs to be there. Or here at home with a wife who is just this side of irrational. 

Or maybe just that side. 
Who knows? 
Not me. 

I do know, however, that this picture makes me happy.

Mama and son at the library. 
Okay. I'm all right. That much of the world, at least, is good.

Love...Ms. Moon