Harvest Lessons

What the heck happened to Summer?

Just a few weeks ago we were pining for Autumn, wondering when the monotonous sweltering, muggy weather would end. Now, in the mornings there is a crisp cool breeze and the distant scent of apples and squash ripening in the fields and orchards. And the echo of a bucket of golf balls being thwacked out at the driving range.

On TV guys in football helmets and shirts are performing the exhibition thay call pre-season. Viewers call it "Where the hell is the remote?" No sane person has the time or inclination to waste watching practice games with no meaning or importance except to the purveyers of automobiles, beer and boner juice.

The tomato garden is lush with healthy greenery and pinkish promise. I pick anything that shows any signs of ripening (in my ongoing competition with the squirrels, who have such a keen taste for the ripe Jet Star tomatoes, that they will climb the vines to get the high-hanging ripe fruit.) I planted extra vines this year, to allow for the inevitable shrinkage. Still, I pick anything that is blushing and let them ripen on the counter. It only takes three days from pink to slicing in the salad, which is why you cannot get this variety in the supermarkets.

The cooler nights are nature's signal to vegetation that Winter is nigh, and so the tomatoes and the marilgolds get very busy with seed production and less busy with stem growth. Tomatoes turn red and the flowers rush to bloom. I keep the Marigolds blooming until frost by deadheading the faded blooms which encourages them to produce more flower heads.

I have been forced to hand-water the garden nearly all Summer. We are as dry as a Jack Benny Martini here. We have had virtually no useful rain for most of the Summer. The muggy weather usually generates thunderstoms, but this year, the storms have been scattered and drenching. Most of the heavy rainwater has run-off to lower ground. We have had precious few gentle soaking rainshowers in the past 3-4 months. One of the weather gals says we are 6 inches below normal. Good news for gardeners, the forecast is for rain every day next week. We need it. Gentle soaking rain, unstrained, like the quality of mercy.

I have been pretty busy lately. Apologies to those of you who count upon this journal to provide a perspective on your working lives. But, my own paid labors have been occupying an inordinate amount of my time. You understand.

In the next entry I shall bring you up to date with the current hellhole project and the unpredictable events that occure, like lightning and thunder, not out of the blue, but out of the gray.

What goes up comes around

While most people were hoping to see another spectacular video clip of disintegrating astronauts, I was glad to see them get back safely. Thanks to our crack news organizations, the possibility of disaster was explored, in depth, live and in color by vitually all the news media except those devoted to the riviting coverage of a missing white girl in Aruba.

In the end it seems like the billions spent for this ten day ride are a success. Strangely enough that is how my current project is being hailed.
What, you ask, the famous fubar project from hell? A success, you say?

Yes, that is what I said. Moreover, we had a wine and cheese party to celebrate it. I went, of course. Pappy told me "Son, if someone offers you free food and drink don't spoil the party by not showing up." This has been the guiding strategy of my entire career.

And there is a hint of a bigger more lavish celebration in the works. You can imagine that I felt like some one who has accidentilly stumbled into The Mad Hatter's tea party. The users were smiling and drinking heavily. No one talked about "The Emperor's New Clothes" nor did I hear any references to Titanic or other disaster metaphors.

It sounded like everyone was happy about the new implementation. No mention of the unix os running out of process agents. Or views that taking two hours of running time. Some of the actual operational users were screaming about how the system was interfering with their productivity. These cretins were not present at the party - perhaps they were still catching up on their work. Whatever. None of us who were there, sucking down the free food and drinks, really wanted those nattering naybobs ruining the positive aura that had been so carefully architected.

I decided that my previous judgements were in error. This truly was the best project implementation ever! It was in a flash of insight that I realized how faulty my definition of success had beem in the past. I had thought that there must be an absolute measure of success.
But the scales dropped from my eyes.
I now saw that success is nothing more than the shared perception of the people with the budget to throw celebration parties. I can live with that.