Lunching in Triple Digits

Still Standing @ 100 degrees!

Here we are in Texas for the month of August, an unexpected opportunity to live through triple digit temperatures, because our trip to Maryland was postponed.  Of course, the humidity here is quite low, so it is a dry heat.   I actually felt cooler until a friend reminded that an oven puts out dry heat too, and it can get plenty hot!

This afternoon I met a friend for lunch; she is a native of west Texas – Amarillo. Texas women are tough – no  wilting under any magnolia branches for them!  And she was waiting for me on the patio of a favorite spot, Celebration, where we ate lunch in all that wonderful dry heat. But two or three icy glasses of tea, consumed in the deep shade of the patio, and under a fan, made it a remarkable adventure.

I was just proud of myself for not passing out!

I have forgotten what it felt like to eat in hot weather, sans air-conditioning. For the heat, albeit dry, reminded me how summer felt in Baltimore in the 1950’s.  And what I discovered was I ate more slowly, and listened more closely to my friend – and chose my own words carefully – who wants to waste breath on unnecessary words?   

The change in travel plans has meant I have time to consider how our garden is growing – We’ re reaching the scraggily stage. The long hot days and dry nights can wilt even the hardy Pentas  I put in the front of the house. But in the back of the house, the black-eyed Susans seem determined to keep growing. I see them out my kitchen window, waving bravely in the sun and heat.  At lunch today, I believe I channeled my inner state flower, and put up a good show.

Maybe one day, I can treat my friend to a crab feast on an August afternoon in Maryland?

Cantler's Riverside Inn*

The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone.

~Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting

 *PHOTO Source