Plumeria

In the morning of the 11th of August of 2025, I microwaved the salty sushi-chorizo rice with nori sheets and bitter-melon mung-bean soup. I had also a mug of lukewarm lemon water. I ate on the balcony. Sitting out there near under the potted branching plumeria redeems my lost days of summer. Later, I walked, picking blackberries to munch on the way, to Tim Hortons café, there to have oat-milk iced coffee. Rod stepped in to get breakfast with bottles of orange juice before his and his wife's long camper trip circulating the BC Interior, being back sometime in September. His wife Joanne is open-minded, spiritual, and likes the stars and planets. She's Ukrainian-descent. In the afternoon, sitting and standing on the balcony, feeling the warm breeze, I sip my iced lemon water in a mug. Down below, the neighbour Moli Wong's rose garden reminds me of an Earth scene in Isaac Asimov's book, Pebble in the Sky.

My sunny spot or "hidamari" is obscured today, there near under the branching potted plumeria at the balcony. Heavy rain last night and today, the 15th of August of 2025, it has been here on Lulu Island. The Trekker in me thinks that it's like planet Ferenginar, always drenched. In the morning at Tim Hortons, I enjoyed a sausage scrambled egg potato box and an oat-milk Earl Grey. There were two guys from Tashkent; one was more Mongoloid than the other. In the afternoon, back at the café, I saw in the line-up Jack the Chinese man in a brown jacket and Greg the white man married to a Japanese in Hokkaido. / plumeria leaves— / the rain makes planets / out of each droplet

Mrs Horrox told me departees were once presented with a garland of plumeria, but the Mission elders deemed garlands immoral.