middleblog-a suburban babble brook book

Howling Moon

The moon is nearly full, to my eye, and next door the dogs began baying, deep, rich, rolling notes that shivered the soul.  Just prior, a lone wee owl wafted his mournful call through the shadowed trees.  I stepped outside to see what the rumpus was about;  a fierce, bright shooting star flashed through the corner of my eye, while some creature crashed through the forest.  In the distance, last coyote howls faded in the forest.

In the tiny rock gardens, tomatoes thrive next to basil and parsley;  lavender, its purple blossoms just faded, vies with oregano, thyme, sage...  Morning glory rambles up a strategically placed old bird cage, while a rose shoots a single, joyously green-red branch straight into the balmy sky. 

Cucumbers, planted in great tubs, climb the chain-link dog pen riotously, while yet more tomatoes, stocky patios, are busy growing their succulence.  I will not buy tomatoes in grocery stores; there is just no comparison, as my grandmother used to say, between the insipid pink cardboard of a store-bought tomato, and the great, juicy red tomatoes fresh from the back door.  Tomatoes do not ship well, and so the growers cannot pluck them as they should be, bursting with summer days of sun concentrated into one delicious orb, for the delicate fruit would rot in transit.  The summer I don't have at least one tomato plant will be the summer I've shuffled from this mortal coil.