This summer, it seems like we’re in a tennis match between severe heat warnings, and severe storm warnings. I’ve been safe from the most severe problems, but the heat seems to be taking more of a toll on me this summer. But at least I’ve not lost any power due to storms. My apartment hasn’t had any trees fall on it. I’ve stayed clean, cool, and my water has remained uncontaminated. (Germantown, a suburb of Memphis, had diesel fuel leak into their water pipes.)

I read a great article on NPR on how heat impacts mental health. You can read it here. It helped me deal with my own mood swings and lethargy. I already knew that when we have weather extremes and I’m confined more to my house, I start getting more moody and stressed. The stress of world-wide weather extremes adds to that. Extremely.

I’m lucky to live in an area where we have abundant water and can tend my small porch garden. In the evenings, when the sun dips below the oaks to the west of my house, I water the plants and even go for a walk around the block, if it’s under 95 degree. We’ve had a few days in the 80s and they are delightful.

Even in the worst heat, summer nights are pleasant to me. As the sun goes down, I can see dragonflies flying around in the dimming light, their wings golden from the reflected the sun. I know they are chasing mosquitoes. Crickets and cicadas and frogs start singing. It’s lovely to have an ice cold drink on the porch as the heat abates a bit.

I finished a commissioned painting that I’d been working on since last year. I didn’t work on it daily. I hope to get that kind of energy back, but for now, my health and other circumstances continue to keep me slow. But slow is okay. The point to me, now, is to go at a pace I can enjoy.

I’ve started working on my visual journal again, and have written some poetry, which I’ll be sharing with you soon. I’ve also been illustrating a book of poetry by another writer, which has taken up a lot of the year. It’s got me working in watercolor again. I’m enjoying drawing and painting on paper, and the easier clean up and prep for watercolor. Watercolor can be a difficult medium, but I’m looking forward to working more with it.

But this painting, Moonflower Feast, is acrylic on stretched canvas – stylized moonflowers and a humminbird/hawk/imaginary moth. Flowers that bloom at night starting this time of year, when the nights are starting to lengthen. The weather’s been hard on my own moonflowers and often the buds fall off before they bloom. But other gardens are blooming abundantly. I hope as we get closer to September, I’ll have more success, but now I get one or two every few nights. They seem more precious as they struggle open and sweeten the night.

Here’s a dusk photo of a moonflower on my porch with miniature petunias.

I hope your summer is going well, and if not, know that many of us are holding space for you and hoping for better days ahead.

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