Rainy Day Joy

One branch of the family having departed and the next yet to arrive, I took advantage of the hiatus and the break in the rain to take a little walk.


I did not have to go far before finding the first subject, one of the last remaining full blooms of the thistle forest in my front yard. For those of you unaware, Dad would never cut down a thistle until it died. Good neighbor Mr. White, being a bit downwind, will have a flock of thistles in his front yard next summer, as mine deposited all their seeds in his lawn. But he mows more regularly than I (not hard to do, I admit), so he will probably survive the onslaught. Still, the vision of the White's front yard covered in thistles is mildly appealing.



The dock next door is simple, but it does the trick. And it has a nice range of tone on a soft-light day like this one.


Neighbor Dan, up from Florida, has got to be in his eighties, still riding a bike - on wet days! Now there's something to emulate!


On a day like this, Harveys Lake is calm and serene, which is a bit different from the typical Labor Day weeked. It will change soon, I have no doubt, for the sun will come out tomorrow, and with it, the teeming hoards. A nice mix.




We even have a whale in the neighborhood to provide us with direction when we need it.

And finally we come upon the gates to the past, or perhaps to the future, depending on your point of view, and it is time to return home.

So doing, I watched the end of the Penn State game, not because I care, but I need to know what mood most of the rest of the family will be in. For some reason, it depends on the outcome of a football game. Imagine that! Then Scarface and I took a nice nap, got up and put on Turandot, which has been lurking in my brain since about Tuesday, when I encountered a brief excerpt somewhere and had a bite to eat, sat down to finish the day's Soduko (or Sudoku, I can never remember, but Scar doesn't help much) and check the email, which afforded the unexpected opportunity to respond to a response - a sort of layered meta-response - to a delightful conversationalist, even in cyberspace. (Jeez that's a run on sentence! Wait, I must go back and... Aw, what the hell.)

And so, with the triumphant last chorus, I bid you a sunny remainder of the weekend - a different sort of joy altogether. And I must go to bed, else I will have visitors knocking on my door to wake me up, which, I suppose, is not very good form.