I have absolutely nothing to write about, so I’m reaching into my bag of tricks (archives) to pull out favorites from past JUNE posts. The one below is a divine trip I took to the region of Puglia, way down in the heel of Italy. I was so enchanted by the place I returned last year in June.
Why do I have nothing to write about? I dunno. I’m totally lacking in inspiration right now. Reading the online newspapers is so depressing that I stopped reading the world news: full of toxic people, violence and noxious events. This past weekend I disconnected entirely from the internet. I call this a “cleansing”. And I plan to do more cleansing this summer; it’s like rinsing off all the pollutants and contaminants that vile people send out into the ether. They make our world worse, not better. Be gone!
I crave the simple life: sitting in a garden reading a book. Walking through a field with a dog. Cycling down a country lane. Shucking corn and preparing for an outdoor corn roast. When my parents were alive, we had a hundred acre farm. Dad named it Fern Hill Farm after the poem written by his favorite poet, Dylan Thomas. We’d spend weekends and summers there, it was a quick hour and a half drive due east of Toronto. I miss our farm.
Summer was walks along country roads with our dog, Mia, and plucking wildflowers from the hedgerows (yarrow, Queen Anne’s lace, Lady’s Slipper). Idle hours spent lying in a hammock reading a book or lost in reverie while watching fluffy clouds drift across a benign blue sky. Listening to insect sounds: the incessant chirping, whirring and trill of grasshoppers, crickets and katydids, and the drone of bumblebees careening through the flower-scented air. Swimming in the neighbor’s pond or in the Trent River. Cycling the three miles into town to fetch cheese curds at the Warkworth Cheese Factory. Summer at the farm was the smell of sugar-beet juice, sprayed onto the gravel roads from a township truck to keep the dust down.
There. I said I had nothing to write about. Thinking about our farm inspired me.
Here’s Puglia:
Juliet in Paris