After the latest, wettest spring I can remember and the coolest summer, we finally got some heat. Three days in a row over 80°, whoop de do! Except that the the naked ladies – or belladonnas, but, really, Amaryllis belladonna – a harbinger of late summer are now out. They are striking lily allies from South Africa that I love, but I would love them even more  if we had had a longer summer before they arrived.

And the Red Hot Pokers – really Kniphofia uvaria – are all up and at it. Usually, I think, they bloom earlier than the belladonnas but this year, who knows. Maybe the summer will go through November.

I always thought that the Red Hot Pokers were an Aloe cultivar, but, I now read, they are a native from Madagascar.  Which is very handy because the talk at the San Francisco Succulent Society tonight is on plants of Madagascar so I can probably get all my misconceptions corrected.

I love summer: I love the heat and the smell of the air, the slightly fussy views, the long evenings, and, because I was born in California, the dry hills. I even love the tourists that show up for summer.

A sure sign of summer coming to an end. It is always

But first, some background:

In Wunderlich Park – in Woodside – is an old stable that was built by the Folger family. The same Folgers who made tons of money on Folgers Coffee starting about 1865. Some time after that, like several other very rich people – the Stanfords, the Floods, the Athertons, the Selbys – to get away from the  San Fransisco summer cold and fog, they built an estate on the San Francisco Peninsula.

Part of that Folger estate was this stable designed in 1905 by Schultze & Brown. The very same Brown who, in partnership with John Bakewell Jr., later became famous as the architect of the San Francisco City Hall. The same San Francisco City Hall that has the highest dome west of the Mississippi.

Partially as an aside and partially as one of the points of this post is the strange phenomenon that new stuff, like these stables when they were built, are sort of sleazy and old stuff, like these renovated stables, are very classy – I know, classy, itself, is not a classy word, but you get the point. Think cars, somebody driving a brand new Ferrari is sort of crass, somebody driving a 45 year old Ferrari, less so. Part of it is that a new Ferrari California sells for about $190,000 and a 1963 SWB Ferrari California sold for more than $10,000,000 just a couple of years ago. Of course, at a sales price of over $10,000,000, the 1963 Ferrari is much more ostentatious, but it doesn’t seem that way. End aside and point.

About an hundred years later, another group of rich people – probably richer, really – renovated the lovely stable.

Here is a little more background. In the spring of 2005, Michele and I went to Utah to see the Cathedral in the Desert,

a legendary place that had been underwater – and inaccessible – for about the last 40 years because of the creation of Lake Powell by the evil Glenn Canyon Dam. It was then partially exposed because the lake – reservoir, really – was the lowest it had been since the original flooding. We went to the Bullfrog Marina, rented a boat on Wednesday or Thursday, and spent a couple of days visiting the Cathedral and exploring Lake Powell’s side canyons.

When we returned the boat on Saturday, we were amazed by the number of skiboats and houseboats that had arrived for the weekend.

The line of parked trucks and SUVs, with boat trailers, at the boat ramp was probably a half mile long. These were not the trucks and trailers of rich people, they were the hard gained rewards of Joe the Plumber tradesmen. Plumbers – of course – drywall installers, electricians, printers, machinists: hard working people making it in a society that honors hard work. Weekends, they spent relaxing – well deserved relaxing. Relaxing by buying shit and burning through a huge amount of gas and oil. Around the marina, we could even smell the gas that they were spewing into the reservoir.

So here is the dilemma: take about the same amount of money and give it to a few people and we get a restored stable; give it to alot of people and we get alot of SUVs, and skiboats. Sure, the few rich buy stuff like that – just look at the Monaco harbor on a Formula 1 race day – but, by definition, there are only a few of them. Sooner or later they run out of ski boats or Ferraris to buy and then they start restoring stables. Or buy art.

As a Liberal – even a Libertarian Liberal – I think that people should be paid fairly and the tax burden should be spread alot more evenly than it is now. I also understand that the half mile line of trucks at  Bullfrog Marina on Lake Powell provides alot more good jobs than the Restored Stable in Woodside. But it is worse for the environment. Much worse.

NPR had an interview on Obama’s new – sort of new – Chief of Staff, Bill Daley. Obama had brought Daley on to improve his position with the business community. He wanted to improve his position with the business community because….well, shit! I don’t know. It must have something to do with changing the way Washington works, it couldn’t have just been because he wants their campaign donations. Anyway, the buildup to one of NPR’s questions surprised me, The Chamber of Commerce, just across the park from the White House here, has put out a statement that I read as supporting Speaker Boehner’s plan, the plan that he is pushing in the House….

It turns out that, as NPR put it, Despite Daley’s business cred, when it came to one of the biggest crises of the Obama presidency to date, the business community did not have Obama’s back. I have always thought – OK, maybe not always – that there were the Tea Party people, who really didn’t understand economics and the stimulus thing, but were noisy;  and the real money, who did understand economics and would keep the GOP sane. I guess not.

To back up, I grew up being told that what made the United States great was our big middle class. That having a few rich people and lots of poor people like some banana republic was bad: bad for democracy and bad for business. I believed it then and still believe it now. I thought  everybody believed it; I thought is was one of the collective axiomatic cornerstones of my country. I know everybody wants to get as much as we can, but, when push comes to shove, I thought that people will do what they think is best for the country.

I have read about rich people bringing down countries by getting all the money; but they always seemed to be talking other places, backwaters like – I don’t know, maybe – Romania in  the eleventh century or Nicaragua during the 1960’s , not here in the good ‘ol USA.

Then I thought, listening to NPR, maybe the rich were so out of touch that they were like the Tea Party people and just didn’t understand the damage this tax code is doing, how far we are moving way from a big middle class.

But now the stock market seems to be saying they did understand. That this agreement is bad for biz and they still want it so they can keep their personal money. They seem to be saying We may be fucked as a country but, at least, I get to keep more of my money.

Meanwhile, according to the New York Times, Nordstrom has a waiting list for a Chanel sequined tweed coat with a $9,010 price. Neiman Marcus has sold out in almost every size of Christian Louboutin “Bianca” platform pumps, at $775 a pair. Mercedes-Benz said it sold more cars last month in the United States than it had in any July in five years, and Wal-Mart is now selling smaller packages because some shoppers cannot afford multipacks of toilet paper.

I guess that I am all three,enraged, scared, and sad.

I don’t know much about Governor Christie except for jokes about how fat he is that I hear on the Daily Show, but this leaves me very impressed. I wish more politicians would stand up for what they believe in.

A couple of days ago, on a nice 80° day, I went for a walk in Edgewood Park. Thinking the whole time that summer is finally here. The grass had, finally, turned golden – or dry, dirt yellow if you prefer-  and the summer flowers are blooming. Some, like the yellow star thistle Centaurea solstitialis in whole fields,

some hiding in the dry grass, like a bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis) and purple clarkia (Clarkia purpurea)

At the end of my walk, I watched the fog come in through the pass behind San Mateo and thought How nice, the air conditioning is turned on,

But that was a couple of days ago, and who ever turned the air conditioning on, left it on at High. Too high. This has just been a cold summer, while much of the rest of the country is too hot, we are too cold. Even the peaches and tomatoes at the Farmers Market are too cold, they are just not getting sweet. I want more heat.