Edging Closer.

Yesterday evening, walking the Toad through the park in the very end of the sunlight, I said to AMR, Thank god today's not Sunday. Why? she said. Because then tomorrow would be Monday, I said, and on Mondays I have to do my job. And now here we are, and it's Sunday, and tomorrow, then, is Monday, as it almost always is, which means looms the job and etcetera, but the weather is so good it turns out I cannot care. I mean, it's there, the workweek is, with all its attendant glory, but ANYLF is reporting live from the slowest front porch there is, and the jays are out here hollering at each other, and I can hear something chewing or rooting or both over in the holly bushes, and I have a brand new pair of bluejeans on that are a little too cool for a person like me but who cares, and the Toad naps upstairs, and even Mendenhall with its trucks banging by sounds correct. Kids down the hill are screaming about the rules and subsets of rules of a game that seems to involve throwing something hard, like a rock, at something else hard, like a piece of corrugated metal roof.


The droughtsmacked trees are starting to turn here, which means next weekend's mountain trip will probably be to a place that's already turned and long since quit, but that's OK, too. Pretty up there with leaves, pretty up there without. The big plans for the rest of the day down here on the Piedmont: wash the dishes, push a rag around the kitchen counters, wait for 4:30ish in the p.m., when there are large hopes for an outbuildinged toad, some AM radio, a Braves playoff game. I got the pansies in the ground this week. I did a little weeding. I wrote more days than not. The facts of the case are these, and they are undisputed.

78 degrees on the front porch. No clouds. Not enough breeze to say breeze, but the humidity feels single-digited, so we're cool. Not chilly. A little warm, even, over the top of the cool. But cool. And in the evenings—in the evenings, if you don't yet want a hat, it's simple enough to imagine how it'll be that way soon enough. We are having autumn. We are having front porch weather. There is really, friends and fans of weather, only the front porch. Everybody around here seems to think so, anyway.