Trilogy

Trees everywhere look challenged by this summer's drought. Limp top leaves; the horse chestnut are browning at their tips. I see locust shriveling, not from the heat, but from the incessant absence of vital fluids. We are all dehydrated, filled with sugars and processed substances, caffeine and bad ideas. Will fall rains come or will the drought continue? This parched summer. And even without the rains, this queen anne's lace and poison ivy and virginia creeper hold court on roadsides. The trees may prove to have made too big an investment in favorable weather, but these vines and flowers move with much more adaptibility. They are flexible where they need to be, they pay for their individual fragility, with profligacy and variation and an uncanny ability to grow under the widest range of conditions. These pioneers of once-tended lands soak up last fall's moisture from the leaf cover and regulate themselves for optimal photsynthesis. You can see how the creeper disguises itself as a poison ivy plant. And you can see how the lace's delicate structure creates the illusion of a large flower, where there are dozens of smaller ones. This brother of the carrot has an edible root. Its seeds are nearly invisible.

All the other noise seems trite in comparison. Is there a shift afoot, or are we indeed barreling toward that netherville of absurdity. People like things easy; it's an odd impulse having been spawned from such a long and detailed past, but so it is.