Still here. Haven't killed anyone yet, despite something new breaking in a truly catastrophic way every week this term.

But it's peak color, this week, and this year it coincides nicely with the week that it's sunrise during my ride in to work, so I got to watch all the gold and red and green leaves nearly under-lit and glowing in the first sunlight.

Also, I went to a Halloween wine tasting party last night, and it was great fun. Black stemware, so we were all drinking blind and guessing by scent and taste. I got two out of five, which I feel very accomplished about since they were a Chenin Blanc and an un-oaked Chardonnay. And there was great food, and an opportunity to dress up. We had two full-on, con-level Mandalorians. I stuck with a black dress and the most Utena jewelry set ever (black and silver roses everywhere).

And now I have to go try not to kill some more people.

We are having a week long heat wave, and all the plants are very into it. After so long dragging along in the 30’s and 40’s that only the hardiest of ephemerals dared bloom, on Tuesday every magnolia tree in the city burst into bloom as one, as if it were a coordinated collective bargaining move. The violets all bloomed in solidarity, and the no-mow lawns are carpets of white and purple.

Today all the dogwoods and forsythia joined the movement, and the fruit trees are clearly all rushing for the picket blooming lines with drinks and snacks. I’m pretty sure the tulip trees will join the march tomorrow.

Best of all, my potted hydrangea overwintered successfully, and is sprouting green on every branch!

It will be freezing again by Monday, but hopefully not for so long that it stops this year’s march of green.

Okay, I’m a cocktail and a half into the evening, so let’s talk about place. The place you grow up, the place you most identify with (not necessarily the same place, those two) shape your comfort.

I’ve always been a forest girl. I need trees around me, trees to shelter under and soften the horizon, but also clearings to see the sky, and sometimes height to see the shape of the land spread out around me. Mountains make me claustrophobic with all that mass on the horizon, and plains make me twitchy with the lack of cover.

This is what means that skyscrapers around me read like mountains. Too tall, too much, too closing in. And fields that aren’t small and bounded with trees, or block after block of houses with nothing taller than a shrub, read to me as plains. Too open, too flat, too bare. I need trees, trees, trees. Comfort is driving under branches, seeing the sun rise and set through lace, knowing how the sky changes through the day while having a couple storeys tugged in close like a blanket around me.

So being in shadow while the sky is still blue and brushed with the last sun… that’s proper evening, to me.

And when the lights come on in the trees of Main Street, it will be the perfect evening.

(And there they are. ^_^)

I should know better. I really should. I’ve lived in this state my whole life, barring twenty years in exile. And yet.

Me: [muttering as she kills yet another stink-bug] I really hope we get some real winter here soon, or the bugs will be unlivable next summer. Ugh.

Michigan Winter: [bursts through the door in classic Large Ham style] Did someone order… winter?

Me: [watching the mercury heading for zero Fahrenheit] Um.

Last night was the most enthusiastic 4th of July I think I’ve ever seen. I went to visit family, all of us hoping the neighbors would do their usual fireworks show since the official displays were mostly canceled. And, indeed, the neighbors set off an impressive set of fireworks—-not professional grade multi-stage, but the tree-top height multi-color, ten-pack deals that are the top end of what you can get privately in this state.

And so did at least eight other houses close enough for us to see clearly over the trees.

And so did what sounded like at least double that close enough to /hear/ clearly.

It started at 9 (dusk at this latitude) and was still going when I headed home at 10:30. I saw fireworks as I drove out to the highway. I saw fireworks on my way down the highway. I saw fireworks as I pulled off the highway, and I gave in and pulled into a parking lot to watch some really excellent fireworks over Vets Park just before I got home.

There was a haze of gunpowder over the entire area, by then. It was almost like driving through fog.

By which I conclude that a whole lot the whole state feels in need of light and color and blowing shit the hell up.

So, I feel a bit like things have evened out for my job. I mean, we're still doing mad feats of instructional design and support, giving spring/summer instructors a handle on how to teach a fully online course, but we've got a system in place, at least. It isn't the deluge of "fix this immediate crisis". We even have some decent contingency brainstorming going on about Fall.

You may have noticed that every uni president out there is declaring "hope" that fall will be in-person or some kind of hybrid. If you think about class-change, when (in our case) 40K students hit the pavement in the same ten minutes, you will see the issues with hybrid. So, honestly? I'm going on the assumption that only hands-on courses (lab, studio, experiential course) will be on-campus, while the rest... well, the rest do /something/, which may involve reduced in-person meetings or weirdly extended hours to allow staggered passing time, or who the fuck knows.

(For my money, everyone who isn't hands-on will need to stay online. But I'll let the administrators brick-wall themselves to that conclusion in their own time.)

So work is going reasonably! I even made re-contact with the next vendor I was planning a pilot for!

The weather continues springlike, which means lovely, sunny days when it's way chillier than it looks, but all the trees and flowering trees are bursting into bud and bloom nevertheless. They're old hands at this. Half of my new plants have arrived, and are re-hydrating indoors.

And personal life is quite tolerable! Admittedly, I have reached the stage where my SCMs are so tight I get vertigo just lying flat on my back, but a memory from physical therapy solved that. With a towel rolled up under my neck, to support the arch, it's... not the most fun I've ever had, but I can do my 20 sit ups and 70 crunches and not fall over when I try to stand up again. I declare it a win.

(Which means my demi-pointe balance is back! Eee! My extension is still for shit, but I can damn well releve again!)

And then, of course, there's The Bunny. The Bunny that this video bunnied me with. The one about how Meng Yao showed just enough desire to stay that Lan Xichen actually offered to arrange it, which kicks the whole plot down the path shaped like "Meng Yao's entire moral compass is in reference to Lan Xichen" rather than "in reference to himself". The story has reached the point where the Wen sect is about to regret this fact very, very hard. Because adorable Mr "Senpai noticed me!" is about to become utterly feral Mr "You hurt my boyfriend, prepare to die", perfectly prepared to tear through the whole cultivation world like buzzsaw if that's what it takes, and without any restraint except, well, Lan Xichen.

Nie Mingjue thinks this is fucking hilarious, deep down. Both the Nie brothers totally ship it.

We're at about 20K words and still going.

NGL, I find it appealingly ironic that this year, when people are, alternately, locked indoors and can't see it or desperate to get outdoors for just a while and see it, we are having a properly sequenced spring, for once. Steady warming through March, interrupted by five inches of snow toward the end that melted off in two days. Wild up and down in April. The trees are all budding out, the willows are green, the forsythia are flowering, and we had hail this morning. The seasonal ponds and pools are all full, everywhere with grass or hay is very green, and it's so blustery that I nearly got pushed onto the shoulder twice during my battery-charging drive today.

Spring!

ETA: And then we had another hail storm and a sun-blizzard. Spring!

(At least in Michigan.)

We finally got a warm enough day that I hauled out all my materials, including zip ties, the step ladder, and the netting, and put up my trellis netting on the porch. There used to be a lovely pear tree for shade and privacy, but it bit the dust in windstorms last year. So now I have a privacy/shade panel secured to the railing, and a trellis to have my incoming clematis climb. The "measure twice, cut once" adage took a hit, putting this up, but the casualties were zip-ties, which I order by the several hundred, so I don't feel too bad. I got the netting right, at least!

Behold the twitter thread full of pictures. My shoulders are going to complain about all that over-head threading along the largely invisible dowels at the top, but I have triumphed.

I've been waiting for a warm day when I didn't have anything else to do, and Wednesdays are close enough for rock and roll, so here we are. I don't think this is stir-craziness except in the Michigander, "omg, is it spring yet? now? how about now?" that tends to hit in March. On the other hand, I can't deny there was definite therapeutic value in a specific task with simple parameters that didn't change before I finished.

Now: time to turn on the outdoor speakers and have a margarita!

It's Fall in lower Michigan, and that means the entire world is red and yellow and green.

Red, around here, means scarlet and rose and peach and maroon and salmon pink and crimson and copper.

Yellow means gold and pale lemon and amber and saffron.

Green means lime and jade and chartreuse and dark, dark evergreen.

I ride the bus, each morning, looking up to see the sunlight touching the tops of the changing trees and lighting them up like colored lanterns.

This is the place and the season where my bones say to me "You were born here. You were born now."