Posted yesterday at 12:00 p.m.
A leisurely walk ten days ago. Roxham Road is 5 km from the house. Forty minutes on two country roads. And take the opportunity to make phones while walking.
The third cut of hay has been made and pressed for quite a while. Some farmers will do four, it’s rare. This is an exceptional year for hay. The rest is average. Normally, I can tell a summer’s calendar date within days by looking at the state of the corn and soybean fields. This year it is more difficult. It was cold in June and everything was delayed. Or maybe it’s the fault of the stars or this hallucinating contemporary fashion: that of finding and naming a culprit. Or to honor a victim. It’s because of the rain,El Ninoinflation, climate change…
At the end of August, despite a few upheavals, the nights are cooler and the light dims earlier. Summer is coming to an end and that’s good, because too many summer hours “in slow motion” do not favor the dogma of the economy and this condemnation to increasing and eternal productivity.
Ukraine settled in a strange distance, cousin of a memory or a medication. The bourgeois and narcissistic idea that the Russians were going to revolt against their tsar is a good laugh six months later. They resist and now form a formidable alliance with China. We are still embarking on a film of good guys and bad guys. The former American president did not take an ounce of common sense and he awakened the neurosis of the journalists who were taking a nap with Biden.
With the law on the quality of the environment, 89 companies had understood before us the benefits (I smile) of power and authority: if you threaten a government with figures and “jobs”, you can circumvent the rules and pollute (we can’t really use that word, so instead you can use poetry that makes you happy) to advance society.
In a thousand and one municipalities across the country, it is forbidden to make fires outside in the summer or in a wood stove certified to EPA standards, all year round.
It is better to heat up in winter with fossil products or to build other dams by “moving” ecosystems, to be greener. We slowly learn, between two vaccines, that miracles do not exist.
None of the above is said with bitterness or cynicism. On the rings of the stove simmer tomato sauce, jams or legumes to be vacuum packed. For other seasons.
All summer ends are alike. The children are going back to school, there are three more here, some (some rather) with smiles and others on their heels. Everything is normal.
Country road ditches abound with beautiful wildflowers. Empty beer and RedBull cans on the road right-of-way. Walking is good, we see things otherwise invisible. And this strange flash, remnant of a pandemic; this idea that we were going to improve and that the world would change. We have just learned, or maybe not, that nothing has changed. There are still so many people crossing Roxham Road. It was average before, it’s average after. Although, apart from the victims and the staff affected by this health crisis, the majority of people I know almost whisper in shame that they have found some good in these two years of “interlude”.
On the phone, still in this market, I am told that the rental of an appliance that I need for a renovation is made three times the price of last year.
“Madam, inflation is at 8%.
— Sir, the gas has doubled.
— OK, but the delivery will be made over 15 kilometers? Don’t you think you’re exaggerating?
— Since COVID-19, everything has gone up, there is a shortage of everything, that’s how it is. »
If several were torpedoed, many profited from it. And continue with impunity.
Everything is so back to normal, I thought. Between horrors and beauties, nature (the real one) has taken back its rights over the virus. In front of the caravans and the installations of the Passage de Roxham, I made the wish (as one does with shooting stars) to dream more accurately, knowing full well that it was impossible.
Fortunately we have the Perseids and the very great urgency of knowing what will become of Carey Price or the useful and necessary illusion of an election to occupy free and happy minds.
I’m going back to pick up another batch tomatoes, because in February, I will need to remind myself that summer is going to start a mandné again!
Happy end of summer to you. Adding a little maple syrup to the tomato sauce changes everything.