Florida, Again.

Back from the beach always means being comprehensively astonished by the mere fact of green, even if we did go ten 100-degree days, give or take, without rain, give or take. When I was a kid we'd come back to my mother's parched mailbox geraniums; here it's a crabgrass takeover and curling tomatoes. Still: green on green on green, and all this humidity with no breeze to push it anywhere.

We were Boise or Las Vegas to start the month. Now we've come back home, as it were. Ninety degrees. Air you feel you might be able to section off and pocket. North Carolina. That familiar hint of childhood Atlanta. I read in Bill McKibben's Rolling Stone global warming piece that it rained at 109 degrees in Mecca this summer—the hottest-ever recorded downpour. If we're headed there, friends and fans of weather, it'll feel like home, only more so, which will be something nice to consider as the planet chews itself to cinders. Or as we chew it there. Perhaps that's the best way to consider climate change: the winters you remember are gone. The summers you recall are here, but much more brightly lit, the volume turned way up.

Home again, home again. The grass is tall. The weeds are taller. It's too hot to do anything about either. I owe the now-untitled novel on Thursday. This coming Thursday. Six days. There's good air conditioning out here in the shed. Much needed. It vents, of course, into the outside world. Cut and paste your own metaphors here.