Pre-sun beach walk in light south-west breeze; ocean gray and glassy; opaque, colorless sky; subtle colorations of sand discernible and clear as road signs: red sand soft and giving, slow-going; gray, a firmer cushion; white, sidewalk hard for striding out.  Hardcore early walkers out; the usual suspects.  Most of a big moon still hanging in the west, and then the sun, rising orange and magnified, but filtered by a gauze of low mist.  The wintering gulls and Skimmers have moved on; the Stilts, Sandpipers, and Plover filling in, along with the few resident gulls.  Seeing the occasional rolling dolphin now, but way out.  A quiet grace about this morning.  Second coffee on the front deck as the sun crested the tangle of palm tops by the sidewalk.  Greeted second wave of walkers, then turned to chores.

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No rain for a week, none forecast.  Interdependent in this developmental stage, the garden plants and I have established a morning watering ritual three days a week.  No hose, it is individualized and respectful, a labor-intensive method by choice and ethics, using a watering can.  We started years ago with a galvanized tin watering can, but it has long since rusted and disintegrated.  In short, the bottom has fallen out, but there was no accompanying sense of Enlightenment as I had been led to believe might occur.  We don’t like to water with a hose or sprinkler at this stage because it is so wasteful.  Watering with a can is very directed– just the base of each plant receives water– so there is almost no waste.  We use collected rainwater as long as we have it, and when that is gone, as it is now, I fill the can with water from a spigot, and must, of course, make several trips.

This involves climbing the deck steps, ten of them, to the spigot, then carrying the full can back down again to the garden.  Some effort is made to dispense with effort, that is, to not think about the climbing up and down, or anything at all, for that matter.  We try to see everything, but linger on nothing; the early light in the trees, the bird calls, the sound of footsteps in leaves, the ocean over all.  Each of the rows of squash, tomatoes, beans, cantaloupe, and cucumbers takes a full can.  The okra and radishes one; the basil and mint one; and so on.  I could figure exactly how many trips that is by plant species, but I’d rather not.  Absorbed, it is over soon.  Pictured above is the current watering can.  It is molded plastic, for which I harbor a lingering distaste, but it is quite serviceable and durable, and does not care that I am the shallow one.

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