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We had an eventful morning.. try again for the zoo on another day.  Mark demonstrated his excellent road skills and made me aware I need to practice them more, too.  Esme is up at Grandma's house and I went out to the garden to weed corn and mark some plants to *especially* save seed from later...  I should finish the second pair of pants I abandoned halfway through last night.  My right hand is green as grass and probably will be quite sore later tonight... and my shoulders will be glowing with sunburn.

Tomorrow is 5:30 am sunrise - I checked... and contemplated more in the garden while I was down in the corn pulling grass, on places I have been over time, and the memory of being at the experiment station down in the corn and pumpkins weeding and stealing shade in the plant rows in the middle of the afternoon....cold water evaporating on skin that was beginning to speak of sunburn and dust sticking up to the elbows in the splatter pattern, the smell of grass and roots and the sound of water gurgling down into holes that are invisible to the eye..carrying water again and again over the land tracing the same steps lightly and carefully through the field while leaning lopsided to balance the bucket weight.  That is a muscle memory that still 'feels' the same even twenty years later...  I didn't quite appreciate it as much back then - when I was fourteen - but I do now, and the moments string forward to me across the years as I unwind a vine from this or seek the roots of a weed there...   I imagine living in an endless summer to just grow corn and pumpkins and beans all year long... and think about time travel being in actuality this specific skill - to pull a moment forward and 'mix' it across all the years and learn more from time in a 'stack' of moments year after year.   That is because this is how my memory works -- a moment is only a moment because you have done something in it that 'sticks' and it can pull you back to it time and again - a twisted stitch or stop in a seam, looking deeply and seeing light shining a certain way, unexpected discoveries, a word of advice that suddenly makes things clearer and purposeful...

This is the time of the year I am the most contemplative...my habit to be reflective and think about 'being' in general.  As I weeded I thought distinctly of the moment last year watching the sun rise over the Duluth cityscape, receiving a beautiful birthday text from Mark, but not liking where I was, who I was with or what I was faced with and feeling all of the buoys of my spirit, Mark, Esme, home... were far away from me.. they were somewhere, safe, .. but I wanted to get back to them and could not yet.  I remember pulling the jacket around me...feeling 'bare' as the other clothes we had worn were in the washing machine, seeing people stream by in vehicles as the morning just barely lightened, and being whistled at for being out on the street with a newspaper that early in the morning...    I am home this year and where I want to be - family safe, corn in the garden growing, sewing on the table in the house... and time in time, to feel the sun rise up and turn.
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//In Other News//  :  The Cherokee White Eagle corn is almost as tall as the Glass Gem corn, although they were planted two weeks apart.  The Peaches and Cream Sweet Corn is tasseling and silking.. while the Mandan Bride mixed Indian corn is tasselling at half the height and no silks yet to be seen.  The Japonica corn (planetd just after the Glass Gem) is just as tall as the Smoke Signals corn... and the Pink Hopi Corn is hanging on in the very back of the garden.  I should have kept better records on it all - but tied some orange tags around some stalks to indicate that I think they are doing better than their peers and I should save their seed for next year. 

The pea crop is excellent - our first in many years, maybe ever for me, that has produced 'food'... I did not keep them separate either, the Mammoth Melting sweet peas seem to be the ones that are dying off now and the Wando Peas are the ones that are just starting to go gonza... the Bosnian Bean is starting to put on beans and is wandering as high as it can - over six feet.  Shackamaxon beans starting to climb, the King of the Early have flowers on them already.. lots of green tomatoes getting ready, cucumbers.. the zucchini family is not doing very well out there - very little produce but there is some.