In a day and age of apps, AI, services, and whatever the hell else people throw money at to make their lives “easier” and “more efficient” and “informed” I’ll be damned if I don’t have three weather apps on my phone and each one has a different story about the current temperature and forecast. I rarely use weather apps anymore. Fool me once, shame on you…
I was doing a two-day overdue cleaning of the kitchen sink and stove area this evening and, while I was on a tear, I thought I might go ahead and clean out the French press. I was about to fill it with water, spin the contents into a vortex, and take the vessel outside to throw its contents out into the yard. I do this exercise daily, execpt it’s always very early in the morning, when I’m waiting for the water to boil so I can make my coffee. Used coffee ground are good for the lawn. I’ve been doing this for years. It’s part of my daily ritual.
I didn’t take the coffee grounds out this evening because it’s a breach of my ritual and thus impedes my really, really good weather app, which is me walking outside, into the fresh air in the morning to experience, first hand, what the weather is like. Granted, it doesn’t really matter in the Summer in Texas because it’s hot and humid. It could be raining, but that usually doesn’t happen between June and September.
I like to know what the weather, specifically the temperature, is like outside because I run in the mornings and I need to know how to dress. Again, in the Summer it doesn’t really matter. During the Summer it’s shorts and shoes. Sometimes a shirt. In the Winter it depends. It can get really cold here. And it can be bone-chillingly humid. If I’m going out for a jog or a slow long run, I’ll need to bundle up more. Sometimes I need gloves and a hat. Sometimes I don’t. I don’t know unless I go outside and check the weather before I lace up and head out. I’m not relying on an app or a weather service.
I don’t know why I wrote all this. I guess it’s to say that when I need to know what the weather’s doing, I go outside, into the weather. And my lush St. Augustine yard and earthworms like coffee grounds and the nitrogen and phosphorus it provides.
The coffee grounds from early this morning are still in there in the press. I’ll fill it halfway with water and swirl it around tomorrow morning, just like I always do. It’ll be hot and humid at 4-something a.m. tomorrow. I know it. But I’ll still verify it. It’s what I do.