I hate to say it, but the first trees are starting to turn. There are only a few, but it's unmistakeable. Our local weather guy ends his report each day telling us the precise times for sunrise and sunset and how many minutes we lose each day. Sad. The only consolation is the sun is rising later, letting us sleep a little later.
As you can see from the picture of today's haul - blueberries, tomatoes, green beans, cucumber, squash and lettuce - it's also harvest time for the garden. We've had our best bumper crop of lettuce, and should have mountains of beans over the next week or so. Planted this time for the first year were beets, and those are doing very well too. In fact, what's not doing well? The woodchucks. Very little sign of them this year. Thank you kitty.
As you've seen from all our Facebook postings, we have been up to our necks in local politics, specifically to get placed on the November ballot a question about raising funds for historic preservation -- and parks and housing. This past Tuesday, after a marathon City Council meeting that considered and voted in favor of banning circus animals, we achieved our first success, to get approval for our referendum question to be on the November ballot. So, after convincing 11 people, now all we have to do is convince 4-5000 people. Not even sure how to go about that. But it sure makes the election this November something besides Trump for us.
We're also into our season of visitors. Margaret is here right now as she took a week off before she starts her new job. She is heading to Boston for a few days mid-week to be with Annie, and we get to keep D here. Camp Dad for dogs.
Foreign service friends were here last week (Larry and Ellen) and Gerry and Dennis are here now. Next week, our colleagues from our Gabon project will be here, driving all the way from San Francisco. And then, we're off to Maine for the weekend. No rest for the weary. We love it.
It's funny. Gerry and Dennis have been here in July in past years, and it's usually our hottest time. So this year, they decided to wait until August, and guess what? It's the hottest, most uncomfortable time of this summer.
Anyone watching the Olympics? Of course, but especially Mary's swim coach. He has the team doing the events from the night before at the morning practice. I think Mary came in as close to Katie Ledecky as lane 7 did in the 800 freestyle. Pretty incredible, huh? We're recording it all, but don't have time to watch the taped show, since the live events keep getting in the way. Of course, we could just fast forward through the ads and Mr. Costas interruptions.
Mary is pulling a Pop this summer - she painted the porch, the back one, or what used to be the front porch. She said it was looking like "tobacco road" and now it looks like Hyannisport. Almost. No, not even close, but still a lot nicer.
Annie is off in South Carolina this weekend for a friend's wedding, and Joe and Leonor are supposed to have completed their renovation to their back driveway/patio. We see on Facebook that Oliver is getting ready for school track (or maybe for next year's Mt. Springs "round the lake" 5 miler. We also see that Jeff and Melodie are back in Rhode Island for some quality beach time. We also saw a bunch of photos from Peter and Janet's post-Mt. Springs trip, for Janet's annual theater accessibility conference in Pittsburgh.
Claire should be finishing up her camp any time now, and Daniel is putting in the hours at Sherwin Williams this summer. We expect that David and Paula are mightily busy with their upcoming move.
So, hope everyone is managing the heat, not like me. I mowed the lawn, two and half hours and a loss of four pounds.
Anyway, that's a warp - stay cool and love from up here.
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