"Glasses Between the Sheets—A Cool‑Weather Weekend"

The cooler weather is a welcome relief — the kind that makes the colors on Fort Hill shift earlier than expected. Orange, or maybe crimson, starting to whisper through the leaves at the top of the ridge. A small preview of autumn, even though summer hasn’t quite let go.
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Joaquin is back and forth in my life, drifting like a warm front that never fully commits. I suppose we’re best as family rather than lovers, though the latter keeps happening — especially on mornings when I lose my glasses in the sheets and have to shake them out like a man searching for treasure after a storm.

Novena is the first cucumber born in my sky garden — or at least that’s the name I’m giving her as she grows. It came to me because Joaquin, half‑teasing and half‑serious, asked what our child would be named if two men could have one together. Novena was the first name that rose up — maybe because it carries the number nine inside it, maybe because it’s also a prayer, the kind whispered over nine days when you’re hoping for something to take root.

A bee must have found its way to all that pollen the male flowers were producing. I tried the other method too: a Q‑tip dipped gently into the male blossom, then brushed against the female. Maybe that helped. Maybe it didn’t. Joaquin swears he saw a bee on the balcony, so who knows what tricks Mother Nature performs when no one is looking — even without human interference.

He’s brought so many gifts lately that I’m unsure what to do with all the tomatoes I don’t need. I’ll figure out something in the crockpot over the weekend. And then there are the eggplants, and the pantry ground beef I’d never buy on my own. Sometimes I think people who love you have a way of feeding you more than you asked for — as if nourishment were a language they speak fluently, even when you’re not hungry.

It’s something I’m aware of, and something I’ll resist gently — grateful, but still myself.