Summer 2023

What have you survived? The flu epidemic. Harvey the hurricane. Covid for two years. Remember the summer of 2023? I have spent my life on the Gulf Coast. Many of the summers without AC, only an occilating fan. Yet the maybe 100 degrees didn’t hit until August and nights cooled off enough to sleep with only a sheet. I went into my research mode and supposedly 2011 had 46 days over 100 which topped what we think was offered this year. I just know my outdoor/indoor thermometer read 106 one afternoon for my back yard.

YET, it is an ill wind that blows no good. Usually along with hot summers in Houston comes humidity and maybe a few showers. Just enough moisture collects in low places to allow our summer infestation – mosquitoes. Newspaper headlines warn about checking on standing water and give information about times the city will have trucks out spraying. Diseases are a possibility. Not so much malaria; definitely West Nile Virus. With no rain, swatting during the few forays outside is at a minimum and nights are quieter without a buzzing that says, “You just think you are safe!”

However, in my house, fruit flies have filled the flying vacancy. In the grocery store bananas rest in piles with no black pin-sized dots swarming over them. After entering my back door the same appear by the hundreds. I wrap bananas in plastic bags. I place cups of vinegar nearby. That is the old wives’ tale recommendation. I tried one commercial offering I had bought my daughter. Finally a friend gave me ZEVO, a plug in sticky attractor that did help right near the banana bowl. A few still lurk in the area of my meditating chair and around the corner to my computer. One more identifier for the term summer season.

Each mention is designed to get our attention: heat, no rain or perhaps hurricanes, red, itchy bites, or black wiggles in front of our faces. Irritants, yes, and also a reminder that we need to pay attention to the time that like happenings were a reminder that an exodus from captivity was on the way. Even as I write, the high may be only 98. A change is in the air. September 23 starts Fall and summer will be behind us.

Then Moses left Pharaoh and prayed to the Lord, and the Lord did what Moses asked. The flies left Pharaoh and his officials and his people : not a fly remained.

Exodus 8: 30-31