On the speakers right now:

Ran a few miles, did today’s New York Times crossword puzzle, ate a bit. Not too bad for a quiet Saturday morning.

If you don’t already follow Caroline Ross at her Uncivil Savant Substack, I encourage you to do so. I spent part of the morning catching up on emails and blogs/Substacks and, as often seems to happen with Caroline’s writing, part of it jumped out as immediately relevant and important to my life:

“No amount of individualised exercise can salve the windburned heart modernity has scorched. It cannot be healed by a life-hack, optimisation or positive-affirmations. We will need to join hands.”

– Caroline Ross, from The Drop, the Splash and the Ripple

“If you don’t fix it, you repeat it. Hence why abused kids are statistically more likely to end up in abusive relationships as adults. Wiring is wiring unless you’re willing to be your own electrician.”

– Gordon White, from All of this has happened before: the power of the reboot

Got the first harvest of green beans and zucchini from the garden today. A few shishito peppers as well. One of the tomato plants has grown out of the top of its cage. I tied a few long stakes to the top of the cage to see how high the plant will grow.

The salad is still doing well, which is surprising for July. It has usually bolted by this time of the summer, but I guess we’ve had a mostly mild month or two. The recent seeding of dill is sprouting, and the green onions are growing, and things are looking ok in the garden today.

Working in the garden today. The leeks are overrun with weeds and the cucumbers need help finding the trellis. Some small green tomatoes have appeared and the zucchini blossoms are beautiful. The bean blossoms are tiny and white and also beautiful, although outshone by the neighboring zucchini. This is the “I hope I hope I hope” time of gardening, the time when things are growing and you watch and hope for signs that things are growing well.

Sometimes it is hard to put in the work today when the effects are in the future. At least with a garden you only have to wait a few weeks or months. For other things it takes years, or a lifetime, or the results occur so far from us that we never know. Yet, we try. And we try to enjoy today, despite our habits of worrying about the future.

And now a few thoughts on things that I have read, heard, and seen:

Recently read: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I read Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day in 2012 and it has stayed with me. I suspect that Never Let Me Go will join it and accompany me forward. I’m not going to say anything about the plot or the characters lest I spoil it for someone. But I will say that it left me feeling sad and thoughtful in a similar way to Remains. To paraphrase Gurdjieff, if you don’t realize that you are in prison then no escape is possible.