The Secret Garden in September: rather wild and overgrown, even with freshly mown grass. It was a strange day yesterday, some rain in the early afternoon, then it suddenly turned unbelievably humid. Walking outside was like being hit smack in the face with a mass of wet air. There was a severe thunderstorm watch, but nothing came of it here. It’s much cooler this morning, thank goodness.

We took our walk under blue, blue skies and wispy clouds. Perfect September weather.

And we caught a quick glimpse of Henry this morning before he scurried off, frightened by some noise. We’re always happy to see him.

Yesterday afternoon, I went outside with my big girl camera and took some pictures. I find the gardens beautiful in their slow decay. I also love discovering insects on flowers and I saw a lot of them yesterday. Like this guy.

I could have spent a big chunk of time out there with my camera, but the humidity and some dark, threatening clouds eventually moved me back inside the house.

I took this picture of the front of the house so you could see how big the limelight hydrangeas are this year. It’s all due to our very wet spring. Some plants didn’t like the excess wet, but the hydrangeas thrived on it.

I’m just about to finish Shakespeare and Company Paris  and then I’ll have to decide what to start next. I have a couple of tall stacks of books on the den floor; my To Be Read stacks. (That’s not even including the TBR stacks on the bookshelves.) Nonfiction or fiction? I have no idea at the moment. And no, not Louise Penny. I’m saving that pleasure for later, as I always do.

What are you reading?

Happy Thursday.

I took a little walk around the gardens yesterday in between massive thunderstorms. We had two days of big, prolonged, and loud thunderstorms. Huge cracks of thunder which shook the house, torrential rain that seemed to go on and on – what I think of as summer storms.

Anyway, sometimes I wander around just to see if I can spy some insect life on the flowers.

Look at this guy! Miniscule!

I looked for the yellow garden spider. The web was still there, but no spider. When they leave, they usually dismantle the web, so I figured he was still around somewhere. Then I noticed him on top of one of the nearby coneflowers.

He was expanding his web. You can see part of it on the left. This guy is like a major property developer. If you could only see how large this three-sided complex is, you’d be astounded! By the way, one of my former students commented on IG that I should name him Edward.

So Edward it is.

I was chatting on Instagram with a former student, Brian Hutchison, who is currently out in Los Angeles filming The Boys in the Band, along with another former student, Jim Parsons. They were part of the cast of the Tony Award-winning Broadway production about a year ago and now it’s being recorded on film. Anyway, apparently Jim and Brian were talking about me the other day and that made me smile. I’m so proud of both of them – truly nice guys who have done well. Brian sent me a picture of the two of them on set. We’re all still friends and I’m so grateful for that.

It’s always nice to hear from former students – both from the Old Globe/USD and Boston University. My extended family, I suppose. Thankfully, most of them keep in touch via Facebook or Instagram or email. I can follow their careers, their marriages, babies – quite frankly, that’s the only reason I remain on Facebook. It connects me to hundreds of former students.

I finished the Kate Atkinson yesterday and dropped it off at the library. I’ve started The Overstory  by Richard Powers, which won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It’s rather extraordinary, unlike anything I’ve read before. I don’t have the words to describe it yet, so I’ll use the words from the publisher’s blurb on the back of the book.

“National Book Award winner Richard Powers’s twelfth novel is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of – and paean to – the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, The Overstory  unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours – vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.”

So far, I’m completely enthralled and I expect to feel even more so as I delve further into the novel. He is a beautiful writer. I’ve had my eye on it for a while, but it just came out in paperback and that clinched the deal.

My back is getting much better. It’s still sore when I first wake up and begin to move around, but on the whole, I’ve turned a corner.

Happy Thursday.