Hello Summer!

At 4 in the afternoon yesterday this thermometer on an outdoor wall read 102 F (39 C), the first triple digit reading of the season.

With maximum temperature predicted to be higher than yesterday, Janis truck and I took a late morning rock collecting drive today, into the desert, where we came across the New Mexico State Library bookmobile.

Forgive the bad pictures: taken while driving on a bumpy, dusty road through a dirty windscreen.

My first ever library job was in provincial library administration. The work included regular tours with the book van to 43 public libraries and depots spread out across a vast rural region, sometimes inland, sometimes ending in the little coastal community of Port St John’s.

If I scheduled the tour right, I could stay the weekend, sleeping in a hammock on the beach at a friend’s house, driving back Sunday afternoon, barefoot, sun-kissed and sandy, a fresh cut stalk of the sweetest lady finger bananas dripping sap on the back seat.

Once, on one of these return trips, I was stopped by a random “police” roadblock. At that time it might have been considered that I was in another country from that reflected on my passport. Some brief negotiations saw me surrender a few hands of the generosity of bananas from the back seat, an easy toll to pay to go on my way, in my vehicle bearing the PA plates of a provincial government of dubious legitimacy (at that time). We used to call those provincial government vehicles Pa se wa (father’s wagon)

No bananas here now, but ripening apricots and a truckload of rocks for making gardens.

It looks like some hungry birds have already been sampling the still rock hard apricots. There aren’t a lot of fruit set this year what with wind and late frosts during blossoming, but each lovely globe is bigger than in other years. Net the whole tree and risk dead birds or tie little chiffon baggies around each apricot individually?

Hello summer!