Goldenrod is popping up everywhere – a late summer favorite. This particular patch is up in the woods. Our maple trees, especially the group on the far side of the house are already turning color and dropping lots of leaves. I suspected this might be because of all the rain we’ve had. It’s been an extremely – and I mean extremely – wet summer and that maple sits in a little mini-valley where water tends to stay for a while. It’s rather like the secret garden. The tree trunk that just fell is in the same area. I looked it up yesterday and sure enough, a too wet summer can cause leaves to drop early. (As can a too dry summer.)

On Friday, our tree guy magically appeared and chopped up the trunk, removing the pieces with a big claw. Then they completely cleaned up that area. I like these guys. I don’t think I’ll like the bill when it comes, but we couldn’t just leave it. There are some parts of the property where we could definitely leave it (and have) but not when half of it falls on our neighbor’s property.

For the first time in a long time, I just couldn’t get to sleep last night. My brain was on overdrive. Long story short, I’m feeling very tired today. This, too, shall pass. So this morning, I spent an hour or two reading The Bullet That Missed,  the third in the Thursday Night Murder Club  series – along with a nice hot cup of coffee.

So far, it’s a rather gray day. We might get a bit of rain.

Pippa is enjoying the last bits of summer before she has to go back to school. Remember those days of running barefoot? When summer seemed endless in the best possible way?

Stay safe.

Happy Monday.

I pretty sure you know my reaction to yesterday’s news. Honestly, I never doubted it would happen. Not once.

Can you be happy and enraged at the same time? Turns out, I think you can, given my reaction while reading the indictment.

That’s all on that for now.

Awaiting the news sometime this month from Georgia.

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A little trip in the wayback machine today. I finally photographed the picture cube from the Gordon Lightfoot concert we attended back in the seventies (maybe 72 or 73?) I saw him live several times, but I attended this particular concert with my friends Becky and Scott. Both of them were close friends from high school and Scott dabbled in photography – I hope he still does!

Scott took the pictures, developed them, and gave me a large print of a photo (I don’t know where that is) and this photo cube – I believe they were birthday presents that year.

Those were the days when Gordon Lightfoot regularly played Masonic Auditorium in Detroit. That’s where I saw and met Judy Collins, as well. At the time, you could get backstage easily and in Collins’ case, I met her onstage and she signed my program. In the case of Lightfoot, we found our way backstage to his dressing room.

I put the cube on the floor to eliminate as much glare as possible.

The last photo was taken as we chatted with him backstage.

You could never get away with that today – only if you had an official backstage pass, as we did when we saw Paul McCartney. Understandably, security is much too tight now.

Don was thrilled when I unearthed this from a box. He insisted we display it by our turntable.

We miss you, Gordon.

Something about me: I have music of some kind playing in my head all day, every day. I can generally tune it out, but it’s there. Right now? For Lovin’ Me. Whoops! It just switched to Bitter Green.

It may be time for another swipe at the front lawn. We’ll see. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow and Friday. But today is beautiful. I’m going to listen to some Gordon Lightfoot today.

Stay safe.

Happy Wednesday.

What’s that? A cool morning? Yes!

The front that went through yesterday brought lots of rain and thunderstorms, but it also carried away the extremely hot and humid weather. This morning is so much cooler and sunny and just plain lovely. Thank goodness. And, breaking news: the week ahead is supposed to be fairly dry.

I have so much clean up to do outside; things I haven’t been able to do because of the weather. Everything is overgrown. I look forward to doing a bit of that today – but not too much. I’m going to try to police myself and not overdo.

In the meantime, I just might grab some porch time.

I finished Fifth Business  yesterday. I love Robertson Davies so much! Instead of going directly into Demon Copperhead, I’m going to go for something light – The Thursday Murder Club.

And I want to tell you about a series we’re watching that we absolutely love: Extraordinary Attorney Woo. It’s on Netflix and it is so well done! It comes from South Korea and the protagonist is a recent graduate from law school with honors who happens to be autistic. She is an extraordinary character, beautifully acted by Park Eun-bin. The series itself is beautifully produced and art directed. It’s funny, moving, magical, and charming. We are completely in love with it and are happy to hear they’re shooting a second season. It’s good for the soul. So nice to see a series dealing with autism in a moving and humorous manner. I’m learning a lot. Z is on the spectrum, so this really resonates with us.

I recommend it highly. Thanks to our friend Adrian for recommending it.

Stay safe.

Happy Sunday.