September, sickness, school

The new school year is back into full swing. With introductions over, we are well into academic work. With my first year groups, I’m teaching Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and the memoir of the Cambodian genocide I taught two years ago, First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung. Then in the second year, my English literature students are beginning The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin. They are finding it difficult so far. We’ll see.

*Walking along a wooden bridge over the fjord with my small student group for “species identification” time, we found this red-legged shieldbug,* Pentatoma rufipes. It also apparently has the extremely generic common name “forest bug.” According to iNaturalist, this one seems to be near the northern edge of its range.

So I am juggling these three stories in my mind as I work, one a close, family drama, two examining the world on a societal scale. One a true story, two inventions. One on another planet, two on earth. I’ve also amassed a sudden flurry of grading to give feedback on, on which I’m already procrastinating.

*Walking down to school on a misty morning.*

I’ve been sick for the last week. I missed one day of school with flu-chills and a fever. After that, I’ve been trying to sit more in class and rest when I can. I always forgot how much illness drains one’s energy. I’m on the mend, but it’s been slow.

*Nearly the same view as the photograph above (maybe ten feet higher up the hill), on an evening a few days later.*

And then, the land keeps changing around us. When I felt well enough, we tried for one more run of the blackberries, but someone had come before us. We got only a few. Now the season for them is nearly over–just a handful of unripened red berries remained on the plants when we left them. And the flowers of summer are mostly gone; even the late devil’s bit scabious are looking scruffy as they go to seed. The hillsides are more uniformly green. There is more blackened foliage among the living. We have a couple pots of dahlias outside, which all summer gave us flower after flower, and now they too are slowing down.

*This little white flower, though, has shown up recently. It is* Gypsophila repens, *creeping baby’s-breath. It is growing up out of a crack in the rock in front of where we park our car, with moss and other little plants. There must be just enough soil in there to support it.*

*Here’s a close-up of the flower itself.*

I forget that it’s only early September–actually, fall is just beginning, and in the next months will be coming the turning leaves and the rolling mist. I’ll look forward to that.

Best wishes for the weeks ahead,
Jimmy