Summer on the Wane

You all are way too kind, giving me 18 comments on that pathetic post yesterday. My brain just was not working that morning! I guess a combination of starting back to work with a new boss and trying to settle my mother's estate pretty much short-circuited my mental faculties.

I'm not writing about the estate for privacy's sake, but suffice to say it's a heck of a lot of work. And what I'm doing is nothing compared to what my brother, as my mom's executor, is going through. Dave and I are supposed to meet with an accountant this afternoon to get a sense of the tax issues surrounding all this. It makes my head ache. I know this is a very bourgeois thing to say, but I hate money. (I know, I know -- you'll be happy to take it off my hands!)

Work is going well, at least. We now have all the kids on campus -- in fact, today is our first day of regular classes in both the middle and high schools -- and I'm already getting lots of summer books back. You know nothing makes me happier than people returning books, and yesterday I put away more than two cartloads of them. Every book returned is one less book I'll have to chase later.

Remember how I surrendered "Demon Copperhead" to a library parent who wanted to read it over the summer? (It's still not back yet, by the way.) Well, I've done the same thing again. I had Gabrielle Zevin's book "Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow" checked out, and in fact I was about 20 pages into it. But a teacher asked for it on Wednesday and said he'd been unable to finish it when he borrowed it in the spring, and he only had a few pages to go. So I gave it back to him. Frankly, I am overwhelmed with stuff to read and do and I don't have time for it anyway. I'll get to it after he returns it.

In the garden, our sunflowers are still showing no signs of flowering. A few of them are quite tall, at least as tall as I am, but I don't see any buds yet. This is weird because last year at this time we had flowers. It's been much cooler and damper this year, so maybe that's what's holding them back? All I know is they better get a move on or it will be too late. Forecasters are saying our summer may already be over.

Also, check out the plums in that same post. I forgot about those! This year we didn't get any. Our tree produced a lot of tiny fruits in the spring but almost immediately they seemed to shrivel. They all looked like little kidney beans, hanging from the branches. I don't know what happened, but I hope it's not permanent.

I told Dave it's about time to start buying berries again. We are nearing the end of our blackberry season -- many of the berries on the vine are past ripe and the ones that are still edible are smaller and more sour. This was my haul yesterday morning when I picked berries for my cereal. They're not bad, but they're no longer at their best -- again, perhaps because of the cool and damp.

And now, off to work!

(Top photos: A blue tit on our hogweed, which as you can see has gone to seed. Hey, that's kind of a poetic sentence!)