Post Holes.

Construction on the cat porch has begun. If one was in real estate, or historic preservation, or in public relations, or if one was even medium-sane, one would call it a potting shed. But it is a cat porch.

The plan—and this, friends and fans of balloon construction, is a revolution—is as follows: Build the floor, frame out the walls, glue a roof to it, screen it in. Then? Cut a hole in the wall of the house and send the cats on through.

Will there be photographs?


Oh, yes. But will there still be weather?


There will always, always, be weather. We may even get some here today. Keep an eye out those west- and north-facing windows, my pretties. If you have bags of cement, cover them. If you have litter boxes, build some sort of monstrosity in which to house them. See how it all works out?

Copy-Edit.

AMR reports today: Hot. It was hot. It was bright. It didn't rain.

I missed all of that in the throes of one more draft, one last copy-edit. Hey, book. I wore my pajama pants until almost 6 pm. I think I remember it being hot and/or bright, but I think I also remember a couple hours of haze sometime midafternoon, which means AMR's reportage may not be quite Peabody-worthy yet, but let's just go with our man on the ground, as it were, and say it was hot today. And bright. Let's hang that same forecast up on the big board for tomorrow, with maybe a medium chance of storms.

Mashed fresh potatoes. Steamed fresh broccoli. Even if you missed the whole day, it was still summer at dinnertime.

Is copy-edit hyphenated? Is dinnertime a word?

Cool Evenings.

It's still cool enough in the evenings here in early June to make the prospect of mowing the lawn and having a cold beer seem more than anything like a better-than-fair price for having been able to get up in the morning at all. We've cleared off, cleared into a more normal summer pattern: chance of storms most days out of the next however many, fewer cool evenings in the offing. But for now, for tonight—Miller High Life Light. In a bottle. Bin full of grass clippings on the curb. Pretty little yard. Dog on the porch to oversee the whole operation. Cat in the screen door wishing it was him. I'm wearing boots I bought for nineteen dollars ten years ago. We're doing alright over here at 709. We are doing alright.

Official Statement.

I'm going to go ahead and call it before the sun breaks through and makes everything pleasant again: This, friends and fans of June storms, is the TLK winter. Every June. Every single one, every time. Long sleeves, gray sky, afternoon coffee, a book on the porch. This is it. Keep your dogwood winters, your Indian summers. This is early summer on the Piedmont. This is the TLK winter.

Update: not ten minutes later, the sun came out. This does not obviate the official call. Nothing can obviate the official call. And don't get all excited quite yet, either, Greensboro: there may yet be a little more rain up out of the south. Or the west. We shall see.

More Rain.

If I had to guess—it's raining a little too hard to go check the gauge—I'd say another inch. And more coming. This is some rain, friends and fans of the sound of this sort of thing through your just-open windows. Don't open them too far for fear of water on the floors, but if you can sleep—if you can lie down without worrying too much about how much water's in your basement, your outbuilding, your garden front or back—then this is windows-cracked weather. This is the kind of night where, if one was so inclined, and if one was able, one could sleep the sleep of the just.

Much Rain.

First off, let's us say this: it's still raining. It's been raining since somewhere in the five o'clock hour, but the rain we are currently enjoying—gentle, lovely, soaking—is not the rain we enjoyed this evening, which was famous even before it ended. It's rained before at ANYLF, notably here and here. And it's hailed before, too. But this rain was bigger. And this hail, while it lasted, was much, much smaller, and so not as fancy (or damaging), but the crackerjack staff here at ANYLF demands the reporting of hail when it hails. So: pea-sized. Some. Two or three separate times somewhere close to seven o'clock. Minor tomato damage. Moderate petunia damage, but those fuckers get damaged if you look at them crossways. What they like is three days of sun. We do not so much have that right this second.

There was wind, too, of the will-La-Vieja-Nueva's-tree-come-tossing-into-our-yard? sort, but other than the tomatoes, we came through that fine, and the tomatoes are now staked to some maple tongue-and-groove flooring I was saving for, it turns out, this storm. But this is not about the wind. It is also not about the hail. This, friends and fans of astonishments meteorological, is about the rain, which, if you're scoring at home, and we were, was 4.4 inches in about two hours: ANYLF world record. What happens when that happens? Water in the outbuilding, for one. For two, water in the basketball court down in the park:


For three, water all everywhere else all over the city. Buffalo Creek: for a while this evening, not so much a creek.

You want your radar progression? Oh, weatherheads, we have the radar progression. Here's six o'clockish:


And then I went out back, to the as-yet-unflooded outbuilding, because I thought that giant comma of doom had moved past us. But it backfilled, or backbuilt, or just plain backed up, and I got stranded out there while all hell broke loose. This, though, is a classic—or familiar, at least—27408/1 pattern: The line that builds and builds along a Greensboro-Winston axis and just keeps on coming, keeps on raining, keeps on sprouting new storms. Does it rain an hour north or south of here? By and large, it does not. I think the fancies like to use the word 'train' when this happens. But I digress. Here's 7:50:


And then here's nine o'clockish:


And at this late hour there is something large back towards the Wilkesboros which, should it somehow hang together, could deliver another half an inch easy. It may slide north, or it may fizzle out. Or it may once more send water in under the front wall of my office out back, as yet unrenovated, happily, and also formerly a peanut shop, says La Vieja Nueva, and about which more another, less weathery time. For now: it rained. It rained like this was the last chance it was going to have to rain. We're now almost an inch over our average for June, and it's June the three. For now: let's get you back to your regular programming, which may already be in progress. This is ANYLF, reporting live from the ark.

Large Storm.

Hello. That was something. We still have all our fingers and toes over here, but the tomatoes are down. More a little later.

Nineteen Days.

Nineteen days until it's officially summer, and this is what we get? We're on a kind of back-and-forth jag these past few days: Sunday, hot as hell. Yesterday, so pleasant you considered outdoor projects. Today, curled fetal in the darkened hallway. We're headed for ninety. It's water-the-pots weather. It's don't-walk-the-dog weather. It's how-soon-is-it-cold-beer-time weather. It's why-would-I-have-even-considered-building-a-screen-porch-if-this-is-how-it's-going-to-be weather. And it's not even that hot. It's not even summer. Ladies and gentlemen, June.