I confess, these are my kind of summer days: breezy, cloudy, cool instead of blazing sun and heat. Not good for dahlias, maybe, or cosmos, those delights of the garden. Still, days like this leave me energized, though I ventured out only check the mail( an appeal from the Nature Conservancy) and the garden, to water and weed.

I have not written much here, though I started forty-nine drafts. Racism is on my mind, and the incredulous acts of injustice that continue to occur every day with bewildering rapidity. Children are getting shot, criminals are getting pardoned, women are getting beat up. The videos record evidence, even as lies spew out. I start a sentence but it drifts off. I go back to read the papers.

But I can always write about the weather: it is such a mood indicator, a metaphor, a way in. Today seems like a storm is brewing somewhere close, but I think rain won’t come, only this wind, this portent.

And this sweet pea. Startling pink, and a surprise.