I'm Back!

Here's Dylan with his sculpture made from the huge quantities of squash I brought from my garden into Lacoochee School on my last day of volunteering this year. It was a very fun day and the creations were awesome. We ate prodigious amounts of local watermelon, distributed their cookbooks from our year of cooking, and finished the day with the last chapter of "Little House on the Prairie". I have loved my 'adopted' classroom. I know I will see these kids next year, and maybe some of them over the summer at my 'camp' here at the ranch. I love these kids.

While my internet connection was down for several weeks I have been seeing the vegetable garden through to the harvest. The lettuce was the first to be fried by our early summer heat. But the cucumbers have loved this hot and rainy time. We have maybe twenty cukes each day, and even the tomatoes are coming along. We had to repair the fence that fell down under the weight of all those heavy squash. Even in this hot weather there is always something to eat.

This morning very early we began digging a channel for the new cable from the satellite. It is about five hundred feet from my studio to the main house, and lots of roots along the way! Now, all is completed, our backs are tired and we will sleep well tonight.

Here is a typical evening's harvest. I feel like a wonderful purveyor to the cook! "Here's what there is today. What will you do with it?" Andy, the cook, makes very interesting dishes with what I bring.

During this time of a few weeks, actually two months, all we can think about is the oil leaking into the Gulf. None of us have ever considered oil rigs. They were just out there (Drill, baby, drill) and I have never supported having those rigs anywhere near. But now I scour the photos and the streaming videos, trying to understand what is happening.

I think this is a disaster of enormous proportion to us all. I think of the children's book 'Motel of the Mysteries' in which in the far future some anthropologists have unearthed a civilization that was buried in paperwork. Will our current society be buried and left for dust by the unintended consequences of technology? There is so much stuff happening in technology! Who of us could have known that the drilling for oil would bring such disaster?

And who of us could have known how greed has insinuated itself into every part of our lives? I have watched the Florida politicians of late hang themselves on matters of ethics. The only candidate (so far!) I can support is Alex Sink for governor -smart, capable, and squeaky clean ethically. I was impressed at first with Charlie Crist as he became independent, but right now he looks like a lightweight, ethically speaking. Surely he had to know about those cronies close to him. And if he did not, as he said, he's not that bright.

Aargh! Seems just right to us to live here on the edge of the Green Swamp where nights are dark and stars are bright, where bobcats and alligators cross the road and swallow tail kites fly in the sky and little kids can collect ant lions in the sand.