quel drame!

Summer already? Earlier when I passed the bank the temperature read 84 degrees - yet there was a chill in the air behind the warmth. Just the way I like it. But now, in the evening, it's cool, with large heavy drops of ice cold rain falling (I know this because I ran outside to close the car windows) and thunder. Rain at this altitude is always cold - even in summer. Like ice water falling from the sky. Someone once referred to mountain rain as the cold wet breath of the highest peaks where the snow never melts. Obviously, since this blog began, weather informs my entries.
     On another subject: I'm sorta lost knittingwise since I finished the lace shawl. It was so all-absorbing. I'm tempted to get more of the yarn in a different color and start another. As a serial knitter I tend to do this sort of thing often - hence, enough hand knitted items to clothe a village. In lieu of the drastic move of buying yet more yarn, I rummaged in a basket and unearthed a leftover ball of a soft yarn (label gone) that made a great pair of socks some time ago. I stared at it while I drank a late lunch latte - it was sort of the same color. Maybe I'll start a sock tonight. It's all I can manage at the moment as publication deadline looms very large and oppressive. Two full days of editing - if you don't count my brief trek up to the Ski Valley last evening where I walked and it was chilly and crisp and my bare feet (looking so very Zen) were cold. Or this morning at the Teapot with two friends, cookies, and mint tea, where it was warm.

I'm getting calls and text messages from the folks back east in anticipation of my arrival next week. Plans are being made for get-togethers, backyard barbeques, morning lattes on the beach, serious talks and walks, and who knows what else. There won't be time for everything of course, but it's the thought that counts. Last time I was there in another June we planned a backyard feast and as soon as the grill was fired up, one of southern New England's famous quick and violent thunderstorms struck. The cooks (my adult son and daughter) carried on stubbornly. In pouring rain with umbrellas sheltering the food but not them, and amidst uncontrollable nervous laughter because four of us inside the house kept issuing warnings out the kitchen window that a metal grill might be a lightening conductor - which only made them laugh harder because they said we look so silly - four heads bumping together in one small window shouting words they couldn't hear - they managed to recover and serve forth delicious sausages, peppers, and onions (indoors) after they'd changed into dry clothes. When I was not helping the emergency window warning crew, I attempted to take pictures through another window. The result was a hodgepodge of gray umbrella-shaped smears with legs. Maybe I should buy an underwater case for my new camera before I leave.

In summer rain's shadow
they didn't notice my bare feet
on the wet grass