Onrushing Wings of Doom

The end of summer is nigh. There isn't another 80 or 90 degree (Fahrenheit) temperature in the forecast as far as ten days out. The days of stepping out into a glorious humid furnace on breaks from work and eating delicious tomato sandwiches on Kiki-baked bread are coming to a close. The calendar has turned. The light is shorter and changed. As Galadriel said in the (abominable) movie adaptation of Lord of the Rings, "I feel a change in the earth and the air and the water." The Darkness is upon us. Soon, it will be like Ungolient's nets.

Other people look forward to "crisp sweater weather" and pumpkin spice, and all of the other horrors of fall which they don't see as horrors for some inexplicable reason. I see it more like Black Sabbath's Mob Rules (a particularly apt song for the times), "Death and Darkness are rushing forward."

On the positive side, working from home will eliminate driving to the Park & Ride in the pitch black and getting blinded by headlights on the icy roads, working all day in my tiny, windowless cube, and then dozing in the dark on the bus on the ride back, only to enjoy another harrowing experience with ice and headlights.

It means the garden is shutting down. Honestly, not a moment too soon. There are still quite a few green tomatoes that will hopefully still ripen. This week, we are hardening off most of the rest of the potatoes, having sliced off their greens.

We're looking forward to next year.

The future looks grim. While it is not guaranteed, I'm expecting a fall spike in COVID cases and deaths as in-person schools are started prematurely. The response to COVID here virtually guarantees a lingering economic malaise punctuated by sporadic, ineffective lock-downs. Riots and curfews seem likely. Inflation due to the Fed printing unlimited money and historic government debt levels seems unavoidable.

The time to prepare against this madness is now.

If I'm wrong, the worst that can happen is that we end up with a few spare supplies that we will use anyway. If I'm right, we will at least ease the pain of the dystopian nightmare.

Last year, seeds became scarce in the spring. We're going to order ours for next summer now. They'll keep.

While we weren't able to produce as much food as we wanted to, you can still buy 20 lbs. of white rice for $8. Properly stored, it will keep for 35 years. Storing extra food might not only spare us some hunger in a sudden disaster, it might stretch the grocery budget during a period of unemployment. A spare pound of lentils here, a spare can of extra food there, a spare pound of difficult to locate flour on the regular grocery run, and our stockpile should be in good shape.

Lingering power outages and water crises in the aftermath of the latest hurricane are a reminder that it's a good idea to have some solar light and access to an emergency radio. A couple of weeks of clean drinking water on hand is easy to get now, but might be impossible later. Is there a way to get rid of human waste without the ability to flush? These are things we have taken care of already.

I believe it might not be a bad idea to get more propane for our emergency heat supply.

I could be wrong. I hope I'm wrong. But there are no adverse consequences to being prepared for the worst.