§ Happy summer, officially. It feels like it too, with a heat wave rolling in bringing temperatures over 100°f.
It seems like everything in the garden is growing at a breakneck pace now to make up for lost time. The pea plant is suddenly in full bloom and, on Monday, I found a handful of pea pods growing out from the flowers. The scarlet runner bean is an impressive climber, stretching at least nine feet tall now, outgrowing its trellis already. I found my first ripe raspberries of the season.
Bordering long stretches of the interstate, enormous colonies of yellow bird’s-foot trefoil have come into bloom all at once. A radiant gold nearly blotting out the green grass below.
§ On Wednesday evening, the day’s thick slog of humidity finally gave way to a violent rainstorm that blew over our arbor taking our clematis, in peak violet bloom, along with it.
§ I reserved two hotels for my Ireland trip—35 days away now: four nights in Dublin and four nights in the countryside near the Cliffs of Moher.
I had to resist my natural inclination to split the trip into a bunch of short stays across a variety of cities. Instead of rushing around to see everything I’m interested in at a surface level, I’m going to try to slow down to see just a couple of places more deeply. I don’t expect I will regret it.
§ Did you know Ireland is smaller than Ohio? 32,000 vs 44,000 sq mi. Wild.
§ I finished “reading” The Morning Star. The audiobook—which was particularly well made—really deserves a larger share of the credit here than the paperback. Still, is this the fastest I’ve ever finished a book? 680 pages in eight days.
The novel exudes a haunting atmosphere. Beautiful Scandinavian monotony carries on for pages upon pages in the foreground while a lurking doom steadily grows underneath, occasionally breaking through to make its presence known to the unsuspecting characters.
A few of the characters were intensely unlikable in a morbidly compelling way (Jostein, Arne), a few were almost entirely sympathetic (Vibeke, Solveig), but most were a realistically human mix (Egil, Kathrine, Turid). By the end, even characters I thought were unredeemable were humanized.
The characters bring life, the lurking doom brings suspense, and the vividly-depicted daily mundanity punctuates everything with lightness.
Onto the next book in the series. From everything I’ve seen, it should be quite different than the first. I’m keeping an open mind.
