i am so grateful that i am basically retired. my four children remaining at home are all back in school, with some variation of success; the youngest loves it the most. the older ones are grateful to have something to do, no matter how much they disdain it. i am grateful to have active help in watching them go forward. my wife wants me to be involved but feels like she needs to keep track as i will get too busy and let things slip. and besides, with my own kids, i tend to believe what they say. bad idea.

some righteous thunder and gentle rain are coming through. they seem to be coming from the east, which is unusual, as that's the dry part around here. but it's still monsoon season, you can say, so rain is not entirely unexpected. i was trying to organize a fire for a while there. i figured i'd get one more big burn before tonight's rain. but we got caught up in going to town and getting supplies, and it started raining when i returned, while i was unloading the groceries. there goes the fire. maybe later.

i've become obsessed with the fire. that's because, to me, piles of straw and brush like what we have sitting around, not only in the front but also in the back, are just fuel waiting to burn. you can haul it out to the slash pile, which urban as well as country people use, and that's free, but that costs a tank of gas per truckload and is inconvenient to find the time, unload it, etc. most country people just burn it.

but burning it, there are two different ways. one is to do it all at once. you get the fire people involved, and you make sure it's clear all around it, then, boom, bonfire. i chose against that this year. i decided to do a little at a time. one campfire every three or four nights, right before it rains. with a campfire i burn a big pile of sticks and buckets of straw, pine straw. the pine straw is sitting around in piles. it took me a while to figure out it wasn't going anywhere unless i did something about it.

there are people who do this kind of thing for a living. they just take someone's slash, back to their wild territory, and burn it down. not me. we've got way more than i can handle as it is. i rake the yard, and i have a big pile of pine straw. it sits there for a while, and finally i figure i ought to do something about it.

the rainy season is short; it's almost over. i got a slow start; i let a couple of rains come along, without jumping on the opportunity. some other folks had big fires; they just took advantage of their opportunity when it came by. i dawdled around a bit until i figured out that now was the time to deal with it.

on the school front colleges and high schools are closing and going online. we have a disaster in our own high school; small as it is, it seems to have gotten it. they are going to try to carry on. the son who is in high school really needs supervision to get himself to do the work. now that almost everyone has gone home this may be hard for him to get. we'll have to see how it works.

sometimes when i burn a fire, i feel like i'm letting go of the past. it's enormously gratifying, even a small campfire, a bucket of straw going up in flames. it's easier than writing my autobiography. it's getting rid of the dead stuff.

meanwhile the cows and deer love our yard; the more we clear out, the better the grass grows, and the more attractive it is to these grass-eaters. they are doing us a service, and leaving us some poop to make fertilizer out of and grow some more.

the cows don't seem to mind the thunder. my wife, though, wants me to come in while it's rumbling, as she doesn't want me hit by lightning. my daughter was out playing in the rain the other day, splashing in the puddles and getting wet, and got sick on one school day - i think it was because of rolling in the puddles too much. my wife says that's a wives' tale, that getting all wet makes you more likely to catch something. but we all, paranoid of covid as we are, watched her closely. it seemed like a garden variety sickness. yes but we watched closely anyway.

then today she jumped out of the car to give an older girl a big hug. i was horrified. ok, now this girl is part of our family, at least for fourteen days. whatever she's got, you've got, then i've got, and all your brothers and sisters too. the price of a hug. maybe it'll be ok, since it was outside, and only for a couple of seconds. but i have no faith, i'm very suspicious.

the thunder, having passed by overhead more or less, has been replaced by a steady, gentle rain. i'm loving it. new mexico is usually so dry, so intense with the sun and the desert heat, that i feel like i have to go outside during this entire monsoon season, and soak up every drop. some people measure it and know that, out of maybe ten or twelve inches we'll get all year, most of it is coming now. this is it. this is all we'll get. and if that's true, i want to be there for every drop.