Concrete Slab.

Summer. Thunderstorms in the afternoons, mornings with heat already in them. Limes in the house. Cut flowers. Short pants. Sandals. The shed's doing beautifully, making the insulate-the-floor choice we made look good: Insulate the floor, and it's easier to heat in the winter; don't, and the cool of the night spends all morning coming up through the slab. And which do you want—a roaring fire, or a roaring A/C? Don't answer that. If it's the wrong one, nobody around here wants to know.

One of these days we'll see ninety for the first time this season. Could very well be today. It was 85 at the airport an hour ago, says your tax dollar and mine. This would usually around the forecast be cause for rending of garments, gnashing of teeth, sackcloth, ashes, the whole lying opera. But somehow today it feels alright. Maybe it's the newness, the oddness of the change of season, the persistent green of all these perennials pushing hard for bloom. Maybe it's just laziness or distraction. Either way, it's here, and we're here, and it's hot and hazy and May and we won't see much change until the weekend, so settle in for this or hunker down somewhere cool, somewhere they haven't insulated the floor.