For the last two years, when I pass this tree on the Humber River, I put my hand on it to express solidarity with it in age and spirit. My admiration is more urgent this year because there's no fruit, the charcoal limbs are knobbly-arthritic, and the leaf cover is thin like a bad comb-over. Two days ago, I put my arms around it and hugged it proper.
 
It's part of a ghost orchard — five trees from an orchard planted in the 19th century. They are wild now and produce green apples the size and consistency of a jawbreaker. Before they hit the ground there are copper blemishes marking insect feasts. Starting in late August, the scent of fermentation is in the air.  
 
I might see this tree pass. I don't know the tree plan for parkland in the west end. I bet it's safe and economical. Why can't we establish orchards in city parks? 
 
I went on a Saturday outing to Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard. It's right across from Eglinton West station. Volunteers care for it. There's a beautiful pollinator garden, too. I strolled back downtown along the Cedervale Ravine. 

​​My love of orchards goes back to my Niagara childhood.

​***
 
"It was more powerful than I had imagined finding Frost's last orchard still thriving…All praise and all miracle...The poet may die, but the poetry continues."
 
A passage from Helen Humphrey's The Ghost Orchard about the thrill of standing in Robert Frost's orchard at his Ripton, Vermont writing cabin.
 
***
 
You can't imagine the talks I've heard on addiction in nearly 30 years of recovery. None have expressed more compassion than this talk from Tara Brach. She expresses humanity beautifully. 
 
***
 
I like the way these songs sound together. Adrianne Lenker is something.

The ribbing is seductive. I leave it on the table until I smell a jasmine aura. When it’s juicy as a peach and there’s no struggle scooping out the guts. Eat it all in a day so that it won't sour or, worse, need refrigeration. Ripeness turns quickly to rot.
 
The first time I went to the market in Cannes and bought a melon the woman asked me when I would eat it. I was confused. Why did she need to know that? It was like a lesson in magic. Knowing when it was ripe was her job.
 
Ripeness is a state at odds with travel. Consider the care needed to drive anything ripe and tender the few short miles from roadside stand to home. It's like transporting a stack of porcelain tea cups.   
 
Growers who ship their produce might harvest fruit before it reaches its "last, intense phase of life."[1] The essential pleasure remains in the field. The natural cycle foreshortened. Edward Behr writes that "a melon that's picked only partly ripe will gain in juice off the vine but not in aroma or sugar."[2], so under ripe specimens will never realize their potential as a "feast for our eye and palate."[3]  Niki Segnit in The Flavour Thesaurus writes, “Melons…share cucumber’s green, grassy flavor notes.” I want to make melon jam according to Christine Ferber.

You should see my mom’s smile when I talk about cantaloupe and ice cream. We like a scoop of maple walnut or pralines and cream in the glorious orange bowl made by nature. To amplify the fruit’s caramel finish. It tastes like a rocket ride to childhood.

Blanket flowers and cantaloupes share the season. In colour they’re cousins. I took that sexy photo.

Found inspiration in a refreshing Syrian beverage:
 
Cateloupe + organic plain yogourt, + lime juice + rosewater + too much ice + sparkling water or kombucha + mint.
 
***
 
When I pull over to park on the shoulder of Highway 8 or a Lincoln County Road near a roadside stand something snaps in me. I want it all — six of this and two of that and a basket of something.
 
I remember the region in an earlier agricultural time when the fruit trees towered over you and people from all corners of the globe grew grapes for Brights, or for wine at home, and had big gardens. When E.D. Smith was booming.
 
My dad was always a solid gold passenger in the country around Grimsby. We'd drive through orchards near the Lake Ontario shore and past wineries heading toward the escarpment. Behind the wheel of his Black Buick Regal with the red leather interior. My family has lived in the Niagara region since the 1930s — closer to the locks and shipyards. I’d give a lot to do that with my dad again or with anyone in my family.
 
***
 
"I’ve tried everything but therapy." We know. Thank you, Teddy Swims.

​
[1] McGee, Harold. On Food and Cooking. The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. (New York: Scribner, 2004) p. 353
[2] Behr, Edward. 50 Foods. The Essentials of Good Taste. (New York: The Penguin Press, 2013) p. 84
[3] McGee, p. 353

Do you know what a lighter is as it relates to lake boats? I didn’t until a conversation last week with my uncle about running aground in the Detroit River. Now I’m an expert almost influencer.
 
I’m not, and I know more than your average bear. I’ve spent most of my life living on the Great Lakes. I ask real conversation starter questions like, 'How often were you on the Detroit River?'
 
I’m proud to have family who can answer that. Boat talk is like a breakfast of fresh sourdough with tangy cultured butter and a wedge of cantaloupe that tastes like tea roses and honeycomb and sunshine. It’s the lush fat on top of yogourt. Plain and good and often brings on laughter.

A lighter is a boat to offload cargo, allowing a stuck boat to rise in the water.
 
I think about my grandfather Harry trying to rock the boat off the riverbed. Throwing the laker into forward and reverse, like you do with a car. Growing a Molson Golden thirst in the swelter of the engine room. Calling a lighter or a tug is likely a costly last measure.
 
It got me thinking about water levels:
 
“Climate models indicate that lake levels could drop as much as a metre and outflows could be reduced by 30% in the next fifty years. Water diversion to areas with drought may further lower lake levels.”
 
Lakes are always in flux. Even with state-of-the-art equipment, hitting bottom is inevitable. Search Google for ‘freighters stuck in the Great Lakes,’ because there is a flotilla or two worth. The proportions are Ridley Scott. Just another day at the office.
 
The work of a lighter is poetic. I’m grateful to the humans who help me get unstuck.
 
***
 
August is the season of hollyhock thirst. Plant me a yard full of flowers to tower over me. 
 
***
 
A beautiful mother with two young children on the subway randomly told me my eyes were stunning — just like that. I was out on a solo ice cream trip.
 
Twice lately a person I respect has called my writing “breathtaking.” A word in the dictionary. 
 
Trying to notice the ways I’m seen.
 
***
 
A New Kind of Slavery.
 
This reporting on temporary foreign workers from Ghada Alsharif of the Toronto Star is important. (For hospitality and farm workers who can’t afford the newspaper subscription, you can access it through Canadian Newsstream at your local library online.) There are other writers who have been thoughtful on this subject.
 
I am using my letter writing skills for good now. Being of service. Practicing another kind of influence.
 
***
 
This came to me in radio mode a week ago. I have always loved Chicago. The piano off the top is a tease. Look at this album jacket.
 
The second song lightens my heart. The title is my message to a friend.
 
And that last song...

I know it. Anticipation. 
 
That thought sends me straight to cookbooks to find these Nigel Slater sentences:
 
"…the feel of the peach's soft fuzz on first my upper and then my lower lip, the way the skin puckers as I bite, a teasing prelude to the sweet flesh that will follow. And all this before the juice — sweet, cool, sensuous — even touches my tongue."
 
I want to associate taste with varietals where the need to travel is not imperative. In southern Ontario local could mean eating a peach called Harrow, Garnet Beauty, Redhaven, or Vivid. The names of starlets at central casting.
 
Calling them peaches is like calling us humans. Why don't we all know the varietal at all the stores? What's the commercial benefit of a generic identity? How hard is it for fruit growers to flip the consumer switch? 
 
I'm eating organic Saugeen Country yogourt and Ontario peaches for breakfast. Lux over here. 
 
***
 
My blinds are down, and I've been fantasizing about Italian marble floors. Sitting in front of a fan, listening to air conditioners, traffic, and global climate news. A big jar of lemon ice water is sweating into a puddle on a coaster. Outside it's gem lettuce and fava bean green with hollyhocks and sweet peas.
 
How does an increase in rain affect an orchard, long-term? Are we scrambling or prepared?
 
***
 
It began with the stories I read in Creem and Hit Parade as a teen. Rock and roll journalism is way up there for me, On tier 'crème Chantilly.'
 
This podcast — The True Story of The Fake Zombies — is special. What a story...and teller. It's high on craft.    
 
There's nostalgia in it, too. It's a reminder of 11-year-old me living in a new town on Lake Huron where the taste of isolation was metallic. A place hard on a tender spirit. A night DJ led me toward Detroit, glittering on the choppy cuttlefish ink water. Bob Seger and Motown walking me toward sleep. A music city on the Detroit River.

I had some high quality lake boat talk tonight with an uncle — always a pleasure. He and Harry passed through Detroit often. Probably Theo, too. 
 
Here's to The Zombies. Colin Blunstone's voice and Rod Argent on keyboards. I went looking for covers and fell for this one.