The tribe

I'm supposed to be making strawberry jelly right now, from the berries we picked yesterday from our favourite "I don't spray" strawberry farmer's fields. I simmered them down - with some of last year's (frozen) apple peels and cores so I don't have to use commercial pectin - last night; the gorgeous red juices have dripped into a bowl and are waiting for me to get off my butt.

I also have to make a big batch of chilli, get that huge tray of chicken thighs in the fridge marinating for the chicken marbella .. oh, and I kinda have to make some extra bread to freeze, too. There's a heat wave coming our way in a few days; a week long, highs in the 100's, nobody-wants-to-cook-in-that-kind-of-weather heat wave. I have to get ready, or at least as ready as I can, with at least some pre-cooked meals. It's not like we have restaurants up here!

But what am I doing instead of all that? I'm contemplating making yet more coffee and thinking about tribes. Actually, I'm thinking about the tribe I know is out there but I'm unlikely to meet - my tribe. Those who, like me, don't see a mass of green when they see a forest or a meadow, they see individuals, they see 'the standing people', as the First Nations peoples call them.

Tincture of Rice Krispies - (Pine Pollen 2)

It's a drag being trapped in the house in the winter time, but trapped in the house in summer is painful. It's so green and lush out there but we can only look and sigh ..

Why are we trapped in the house?

BUGS!!

In some ways, this being a peak year for insects is a good thing. Those goddamn blackflies and horseflies and deerflies and mosquitoes don't just get by on a steady diet of blood, they're also pollinators. (Well some of them are, I don't know if they all are). And they're food for birds and other critters. Circle of life, and all that. I certainly don't begrudge the frogs and swallows their due.

But this year, by some cruel (to us and the other mammals) twist of fate, these bugs that usually come in stages - first one evil blood sucking, itchy welt producing menace and then the next - are overlapping, God help us.

Right this minute, they all lurk outside our door.