“Seen or unseen,” you said, “I’ll live in your mouth.
We have an extra room. The children like it there,
mead in it their stories and playdough.”

~ “Unackhowledged Pollinators,” Fady Joudah

I wake early, and Frank is gone. He texts me, he has walked to the hospital up the street where there is an early morning AA meeting—his first in person meeting since COVID-19 began. My friends, our hosts, are asleep, so I walk the short walk to town looking for coffee, easily found. Frank meets me and we go to a lovely bakery. Everyone is exceptionally friendly in our morning. I have passed, on my walk to town, a lovely garden, a monarch way station, and I visit the milkweed pods and cone flower. A grandfather in the bakery line is holding a toddler and has two other grandchildren with him, and he is ecstatic. He introduces us to the girls, one is five, one is three and he says the name of the 3 year old is Princess. When he turns his back, the five year old confesses to me, her sister is not really a princess. This is our lucky, no clouds day, warm and sunny and fresh and happy as can be. We bring pastries home, and the day spills into another walk to town, the Farmer’s Market, and best of all an exquisite beach day in the Atlantic Ocean, hot sun, warm water, mild waves and delicious friendship. Dinner on the deck outdoors, and best of all, no mosquitos! My daughter has sent me an article from the Boston Globe about the dead fish and the smell of the Charles near us:

MassDEP investigators Thursday are searching the Stop River, a tributary of the Charles River, for the source of an apparent wastewater discharge that coated the Charles with a blue-green sheen, left a foul odor hanging in the air and may be responsible for killing fish, the state said.

Both the state environmental agency and the Charles River Watershed Association were alerted Wednesday by people travelling along the Charles between Medfield and Natick about the adverse conditions. . .

~ https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/07/22/metro/massdep-searching-charles-river-tributary-natick-area-source-foul-smell-sheen-water/

Tonight I get a text from my youngest: she has picked the ripe eggplant, our first, in the garden, and some cherry tomatoes and basil and made the wonderful dish pictured above.

I am concerned about the Charles, and hope there will be more information soon. This part of the Charles is normally swimmable and quite clean and healthy.