Winter was hard but this summer has been worse, because I looked forward to this summer so much. I’ve had 45 summers here and especially enjoyed the season for the flowers, the welcome warmth, and the swimming.

It seems like nothing happened as it should, or as it had in the past. I can keep a calendar by the flowers that bloom around my old house. First come the white and purple violets, then the lilacs… but not this summer. A few brave violets surfaced, but the first floral tragedy were the dead buds on my lilac bushes. These tree-sized lilac bushes are the old-fashioned lilacs that give off an intoxicating perfume that is absent in newer varieties. But the early frosts killed the buds and not a single lush lavender lilac bloom survived.

Worse than the loss of the flowers, was the actual loss of life. The summer started with a string of tragedies. Two much-loved and prominent men died freakishly before their time. A young boy drowned in High Falls. The same heavy rains that spun into unseen whirlpools had already attacked our local small towns and declared them major disaster areas.

The blistering too-hot days of the heat dome alternated with near-freezing nights. For 44 summers, I’d enjoyed swimming in my 200-year-old cistern-turned-stone swimming pool but this summer, the winter freeze cracked something unseen in the old pool, and the water level never rose to its usual level, or temperature. Always unheated, my pool traditionally warmed up well by the end of June but not this year. The pool thermometer rarely reached the comfort zone over 70’. I squeezed in one swim, for exactly 20 minutes, and barely made it up the ladder to escape, shivering and scared.

Miseries here on the intimate local scale, were magnified by the global woes — distant wars, and all-too-present price hikes. We became a microcosm that paralleled a world out-of- whack. Exotic evil new bugs appeared to cluster on the trees and kill them. These weirdo bugs on spindly red legs were imported from distant lands, and formed insect armies paralleling terrorists far away… I had thought to plan a bigger, better edible garden than usual, but while some neighbors reaped boom harvests of red ripe tomatoes, here I am in September with the yellow flowers still on the stems. What happened here? Was it just too cold those nights? My harvest was pitiful: two black peppers, and a handful of cherry tomatoes that seemed to rot before they could ripen.

The little orchard that in the past offered up peaches and pears, had lots of leaves but bore no fruit (even the squirrels I’m sure were disappointed with no juicy harvest to raid. The word “fruitless” took on a new profound meaning.

My personal misery was compounded by touching a bat, which required a series of vaccinations in Kingston’s emergency room, which kept me in touch with other people’s panicked situations- the elderly fallen like soldiers in an undeclared war, the young struck by cars, and worst of all, the bodies of women, victims of the war on wives that seems to have suddenly escalated.

And then the launch of the re-zoning crisis in Marbletown: Was this truly about “attainable housing?” Was it even safe to authorize multiple unit housing with our known water shortages and overly dense traffic? Why enable massive development on 1200 lots?

On August 25th, I came within seconds of that historic crash at the Stone Ridge Post Office- two jeeps were mangled, one caught fire while across the street, a well drilling tower bit into the earth and stone to come up dry again. The very air was filled with smoke and the scent of apocalypse.

I still searched for signs of hope, renewal, to witness Mother Nature back on the job. I recall that historically there have been other bad summers, long before my time: In 1816, there was the famous Year Without a Summer, when Mt. Tambora in Indonesia erupted and ash blocked the sun, causing a “volcanic winter.” There were few crops, people were hurt and starved. And yet, Nature rebounded, surely it will again?

And now comes the ultimate bad news: the announcement that artificial intelligence may kill us all and pretty soon. Fits! I never like anything prefaced with the word “artificial.” Isn’t it more like natural stupidity?

I’m happy to offer some balm in Gilead relief - a surprise birth in my own home.

For many years, my daughters and I have kept a pair of parakeets- Mr. Blue and Mrs. Yellow. For the past three years, they have had a little extra house inside their large cage. But I never dreamed they might mate, and they didn’t until…One day I saw the little yellow I thought was female, mounting the blue bird with incredible zest. Though smaller Mrs. Yellow was actually a masterful male. I knew birds had internal fertilization but I never witnessed it before—and this was an avian porno fest. Next, the large blue, who turned out to be Mrs. Blue, not Mr. was nesting in the previously unused little wood house, and eggs smaller than jelly beans appeared. A few cracked-open shells fell to the floor of the cage, followed one amazing dawn by a tiny new-hatched baby parakeet, who suddenly appeared, no larger than my thumb, covered in fuzzy white baby feathers. He looked up at me and chirped.

He (or she) made us all ridiculously happy.

Laura Shaine Cunningham is the author of many books and plays, including A Place in the Country.