The plan is...

The wind this week was coming warm and dry out of the West. Just as it has all summer long, whisking away what little moisture we had from the soil.

I felt like my requests had been ignored, and I just had to ask.

“So this isn’t going to change, like, at all this season? You’re going to just send hot wind this way for like, months on end?”

“It certainly seems that way, doesn’t it.”

“How am I supposed to plan anything if it’s always going to be this way?”

“Beats me. Maybe…just don’t make plans! I don’t. I just go where the wind takes me.”

“Excuse me? You make the wind. How can you go where the wind takes you when YOU…”.

Momma Nature interrupted abruptly, “I really don’t have time for this. You don’t even know what you are talking about. You all do whatever, so now, I do whatever, more than ever. It’s just like that now. You know I’ve been making real havoc elsewhere.”

It’s true, and I have no retort.

“Go make your little plans.”

From here on out, the goal is to keep it real simple. Keep expectations close to the ground and not make plans on a comet.

We went out and put our last cover crops in the ground. Never mind that there might not be enough moisture in the soil to germinate them. Our window is closing. We will put the seeds in the ground, and hope that the 10 day forecast is a lie. After this week, it will probably get too cold and the days too short to make anything of anything planted then anyway. This goes for veggie crops too. We will stick some last spinach and arugula in the ground this week, clap the dirt satisfyingly off our hands, and call it a “day” on the crop rotation for 2021.

After that, from September through October, the plans will a little bit make themselves. They are the months of finishing what we have started. We do what the previous collection of decisions dictate that we do. Get the onions processes, collect the winter squash to be cured, harvest the fall carrots, fix the things that have broken along the way, pour a slab of concrete, and try to find moments to enjoy the seasons change.

Maybe it’s the weather, or maybe it’s the times. With my current mood, I feel like new plans can wait. And each time a new plan comes up, realize that we aren’t quite done with the current ones. We will wait until those old ideas are done, or discarded. Wait until a seas change arrives. Wait until it rains. Wait until it rains a lot.