The mornings have become chilly again, so much so that I lit the oven and baked banana bread. It was as if Mother Nature looked at her calendar, and said, okay, let’s move on.

Jupiter is very big in Eastern shy right now.

The garden got the nod from Mother Nature, too. My herbs have bid adieu, as have many of the flowers getting Northern light. A nasturtium braves it out, as do the geraniums. It’s time to bring in the plants. one great thing is the bees are in good number, buzzing around the dahlias. At the farmer’s market they flew around the sunflowers, and customers bravely bought the bunches, bees and all. Here is a link to a most wonderful video (10 minutes long) on the plight of the honeybees from the ilovepeanutbutter website:

http://www.seriouseats.com/2008/08/haagen-dazs-mystery-of-the-disappearing-honeybees-documentary.html?ref=se-do4

Tea Leaves by Arvind Balaraman

i  n      a     s  a  u  c  e  p  a  n,      b  o  i  l       m   i   l   k ,       a  d  d        w  a   t   e   r,              t   h   e   n       t   e    a

six spices by michelle meikejohn

s      t      e      e      p ,

Cuppa by Michelle Meikejohn

p   o   u   r       i   n        a          c   u   p

s  p  r  i  n  k  l  e   w  i  t  h      g  r   o  u  n  d    c  a  r  d  a m o m,

s    i    p

a  n  d       w a  t  c  h       t  h e         r   a   i   n

The monsoon hit here in high dry mountain country.  A near full day, without the sidewalks drying to bone in the intervals.  It is so rare to have rain that does not turn to hail, or downpour so quickly to cause flash flooding here.  This was dreaming rain, rain to sail paper boats at small ponds, drink tea and read mysteries.  Rain that made a puddle out of my driveway, that turned the lawn green overnight, that made me listen, listen, listen.

I’m back to work on the book which isn’t, alas, done.  I bragged completion when a revision, that is, a major overhaul, hovered in the wings.  There is a trick writing teachers say when there is, for a variety of reasons,  so little to say about a manuscript:  why not try a different point of view? Ah, even better than merely saying, “interesting,” with an emphasis on the first syllable.

Thus, I am trying a different point of view for the middle section.  There is no easy “find and replace” app for this.  (Do I use “app” in the right sense?)  One has to go through the entire section and convert the proper names to first person, change the third person pronouns as well, and of course, if one is a conscientious writer, one gripes and groans and rewrites mass portions with a tendency to delete paragraphs and wonder, what on earth was one thinking of embarking on such a saga anyway?

There is so much on-line catalog browsing to do instead, for instance, with all the summer clearances.  Reginald Hill and Dorothy Sayers mysteries are especially enticing, not to mention television in this dismal season.  I watched a Real Housewife get married, rooted for the visiting chefs who never win against the iron ones, peeked at the soap opera I no longer really truly watch.

My friend Barbara once reminded me that Auden said when there is work to be done, it became  time to count the pencils and match the shoelaces.

Meanwhile, another friend, Jenny, brought over a vase of real feverfew (as opposed to mutant dandelions I carefully bred in the yard) which sit on the desk, readying to seed, even as the manuscript waits.