The nice thing about tile floors is they allow you quickly to stomp a scorpion when one makes it into the house. The same two step on carpet is not nearly as effective. I just dispatched a rather large specimen with a quick pop, pop of my bedroom slipper still on my foot. And that’s the morning news from Johnson City, as another end of summer day makes its appearance with a forecast high of 93 and no rain on the horizon. We’re due cooler weather next week, but we shall see.

Before the scorpion showed up, I was going to talk about the Barbados cherry. It lives in the front half of the garden with the pink turks caps which is fitting because the little cherry blooms are pink. I error, though, in referring to it in the singular. There are at least four of them now calling the garden home, which explains why the plant’s footprint is so large. But I like it. I can only assume that it will continue to enlarge its presence as time passes and the weather permits.

It’s blooming now which seems unusual. The literature has it blooming in the spring. I don’t guess the butterflies and the bees care at all. The late bloom may be part of its recovery protocol after getting severely whacked during the big freeze in February. It froze all the way to the ground, which is when I discovered the offspring. But it’s back and looking shrubby. It’s shorter now and it may allow for me to spread a blanket over it during a hard freeze, providing it only lasts a night and not a week. A blanket is no refuge at all when that sort of cold comes to visit, for people or plants.

John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver’s Tale