A prophet called "Fireweed"

Around here, they say you know summer is over when the top blossom of the Fireweed blooms. As you can see, it still has a little way to go to get to that top blossom. So maybe this incredibly sunny, warm and even hot summer will linger a little longer yet. As for me, this summer has so far been the summer that really was, yet never happened. I will explain another time, when I am sitting at my computer typing into my blog, rather than walking down the road dictating into my iPhone.

Coffee break: salmon latte

Coffee break. I am in the drive-through line at Metro Cafe about to get an Americano for me and an iced Americano for Margie. Jimmy stayed behind to watch the office. He asked me to get him a 16 ounce salmon latte, but I will forget to order it. And he works so hard!

Jobe waters the flowers – where are we?

When we loaded the boys into the car to bring them home on the day that Lavina went into surgery, I felt the heat and smelled the air and it reminded me of being a boy in summertime, living in the Lower 48. The weather this summer has just been unreal. It has not been like living in South-central Alaska at all. There were those 90° days in June and now for at least eight days running, maybe more, we have had temperatures either in the upper 70s or 80s. Our summers are just not like this. Yes, in a normal year we will get maybe five or six days in the 70s over the course of the whole summer, some summers not that much, some summers a bit more – but this? Where are we?

Jobe is right at home, watering flowers in the heat of summer. If he were to turn around, and walk to that gathering of bushes behind him, he could smell the roses. Alaska wild roses.

Two boys taking flowers home to Mom - summertime in Alaska style

Tonight I was pedaling my bike up the Seldon bike trail and I saw three people walking ahead of me, their backs to me because they were going in the same direction. One looked big, like a teen or young adult, the other two were boys and from a distance it looked one of them was carrying a small, desiccated Christmas tree. When I got close, I saw it was not a tree at all, but a fireweed in bloom.

"That's quite a flower to take home to Mom," I said as I pedaled past. 

"Yes," the teen said. I then recognized him as the young boy who used to follow our late dog Willow and me when we would go walking. He loved Willow. All the immigrant children from the former states of the USSR did. Sometimes, a big group would follow us, all of them loving Willow. So now I stopped and these boys posed with the fireweed.

I realize it is not Wednesday and yet I am, once again, posting. I figured I had to. My birthday, 2013, is now history. I cannot leave it at the top of the page. People will keep wishing me happy birthday when it is no longer my birthday.

I won't post again now until my official post day of Wednesday. Unless I have to.

Tulips? Jobe delights in the wreck; dog fails to come through; frolic at the side of the road

When I took Margie to the airport to go to Arizona not quite two-and-a-half weeks ago, we stopped by Jacob and Lavina's house and there were still patches of snow in their yard - this despite the fact Jacob had shoveled most of the snow off.

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