Watering In.

6:45 in the evening and the hose smell of the little sprinkler running on the new ten thousand petunias. Has it rained? It has not rained. It rains no more here forever. But it's deeply green everywhere, altogether green—we're waiting on nothing else to green over. We are headed hard for summer, even if today's excellent temps say otherwise.

Will it rain? It may. It may rain any of the next few days. Or it may rain none of those. Drought's not far from here and may be creeping back Guilfordward. Clouds, though: we had clouds, which was at least of visual interest, a kind of looming question mark all day, a sort of half-hearted wondering at what had gone wrong with the light, whether we'd turned the dimmer down too far.

I can hear the ballgame from this front porch.

Petunias. Haven't had a sun garden in years.

Front Porch.

My brother, in town for the procreation in-law jubilee, said we'd given something up leaving the old house, that the old front porch was an odd growth of a thing, but better than what we had here. And in ways, he was right—there was not much better than sitting up under that huge Japanese magnolia and listening, hopefully, to the dogs not bark across the street.

And I do miss that porch, miss that I made it, miss that it turned out to be such a glorious monstrosity. But the view from here—the neighbor's magnolia, the dogwood over here on our side, the streetlight I ought to hate but that instead reminds me comfortingly of Carr Street, the easy frequent sounds of trains, the front-porchiness of this porch—the view from here, tonight, with rain off to our north and west and breeze coming in strangely from the east and south, a little springtime gin in a glass and a squeeze of lime, the dog set up on the front porch steps just yes exactly as she used to back at the white house (930? 933? it was one of those) in the bad old days, or even the days before the bad old days—the view from here is fine, thank you.

Some kind of weather is afoot. We have busted ourselves free of last weekend's doldrumed days. I am trying and trying to figure out what writing a different book might be supposed to feel like. Cannot under any circumstance no how complain. I think I just now heard thunder out of that distant little storm. This is a fine breeze we've got going out here.

Playing Hooky.

Today is No Class Day out there at J. Crew U. — they shut the whole thing down for a day-long celebration of student and faculty research, but only of a certain kind: the poets get told their poems aren't researchy enough, and could they please include in their presentations what a sonnet is, please. The dancers get asked to dance, and then, besides having been adorable and bendy, explain what they were up to and what dance is for in the first place. And in our department, the Department of Vampires, Wizards, and Bridget Jones Studies, the faculty research presentation this morning is focusing on something like how awesome that movie starring Nicholas Cage where he's made of fire and rides a motorcycle is. So ANYLF decided to stay home and measure barometric pressure. Expect a fifteen-minute PowerPoint presentation at next year's J. Crew Uboree.

But if — if — one can get out of one's head for one wee moment, and if one can drag one's head to the place where the INCESSANT ENDLESS HIGH-DECIBEL MOCKINGBIRDING is a soothing beautiful sign of the circle of life and renewal of seasons, then one can sit on one's porch in the sunny breezy sixties and think to oneself, So I work at a puppet show. It's Tuesday. I'm sitting on my porch and thinking about the weather.

No Sleep.

The baby's out and gone, the pack-and-play packed-and-played, but there is no sleep for the forecast team here at ANYLF. Our clocks are all bent and damaged. Twelve-hour days more the norm than not this upcoming week out at J. Crew U., though yours truly is damn near giddy at the prospect of a stolen workless Tuesday tomorrow. Might not any of it matter if the resident mockingbird here at 709 -- technically, he's resident on the electric transformer hung off the phone pole out front of 709, or he's resident at the tip top of said phone pole -- won't matter if he doesn't start to calm down by some small measure about his mockingbirdness. He's got announcements, and they begin well before sunrise. Well before. Height of phone pole roughly analogous to height of bedroom window next to the Official 2009 ANYLF SleepCenter.

Does one want a baby? One does, if one thinks to oneself, Do you know what would really brighten this place up? Rice cakes, in small, gummed pieces, everywhere.

ANYLF FastCast for your Monday morning: Hot. Not deeply humid, and so quite livable morning and evening, but that two-o'clock hour has the past few days been something to behold. Big dome of high pressure settled in and holding a storm back well off to our west, and that'll be the norm for the next few days. Temps might moderate a smidge. The ten-day has us back down into the upper seventies by the weekend, perhaps, so what we'll do is bake to cinders the late-blooming white azaleas, just for sport, and then we'll gentle ourselves and aim for normal. Probably will have been better than a full week without rain by the next time we see it. That's not a pattern that makes the garden grow.

Melvillian Loomings.

Comes this morning in a festival of excellent timing the brother, the sister-in-law, the baby. To the house. At this point in the semester. What could go wrong?

Weather: So good it makes me want to chase white whales, though there is out there the possibility of ninety degrees Saturday or Sunday, which could sour the hunt. The brother, the sister-in-law, and the baby leave Sunday morning. Maybe sooner, if, say, the baby bangs something denty into the new bookshelves. Or if, say—oh, this cannot be a productive game.

Fires in South Carolina and no rain in the forecast until Thursday. Birds woke me up somewhere in the five-o'clock hour. There is not enough coffee in the world for what comes next.

Archangelic Forecast.

Somehow crawling locally forecastward has of late been difficult, though not for lack of weather: Yesterday's scuttling ragged storm remnants made for quite the show out in 27244, where it seems I now nearly live. It is that time in the semester, though.

Today may well have been the last flannel-shirted day, but we're not quite ready to call it here at Official ANYLF Set-In Spring HQ. There's a feeling among the staff that there may be yet a post-azaleal low-clouded misty day out there in front of us wherein all is plenty green, but wherein one could drink more coffee and more, shuck on a flannel, huddle on the porch in the wet with a copy of some book you've been meaning and meaning to get at but haven't yet.

You think azaleal isn't a word? Today was the last day of Moby-Dick out there at J. Crew U., and I had the distinct pleasure of discussing the adjective archangelic. Those kids are plenty mad at me. The white whale doesn't turn up until give or take page 600. They'd been, I think, expecting something a little sooner.

Tomorrow: warmer. Weekend: warmer still. The plot of a story that came through workshop this week: NBA superstar has singer-songwriter heart of gold beneath gruff athletic exterior. Today's use of colons at ANYLF: excessive.

Maybe Overnight?

I guess the WeatherDeck actually got wet sometime late this afternoon, but I'm not sure that this counts as real rain, and I know it doesn't count as storms. There is a little something trailing back off to our west, but it's still by and large in Alabama, so: We'll say a rumble of thunder overnight might not be the single most surprising thing you've ever heard, but don't bet heavy on it, either. If you've got new plants in the ground, you may yet have to water this week. If you didn't water last week and damn near killed your potted pansies, well, that's OK, too: We're coming up on May, people. It may be time to change those things out.

Azaleas in full show all over here in 27401, and everywhere else in the nearby ANYLF metro area. We're right genteel up on the Piedmont these days. Birds everywhere, everywhere, and carpenter bees, too. Busy time of year. Late April. How lovely. Now if I could just get out from under the weight of the sacks of exams, of the hundreds of pages of Moby-Dick I've assigned. I am in all relevant weather-related ways right now a complete and utter fool. Other ways, too, I bet.

Eighties coming late week. Sixties before that. A little something for everyone. We here at the forecast aim to please.

Outside, Outside.

The weather stops for no man, but I owe the book by Monday, so let's have a gentleperson's agreement, shall we, Weatherheads? Today, when it is so cripplingly beautiful that even the runt of the finch litter, Matthew (we named them), has fledged, let's say that you should be outside, determining the forecast on your own. Foreseeable difficulties: you may get a sunburn; you may have to turn your chair into or away from the glare, depending; you may have to drink coffee and a cold beer, possibly in quicker succession than is advisable.

Tomorrow there will be storms. Probably. If there are, then we here at ANYLF will do our damned level best to speak about them, perhaps even before they arrive. For now, though, friends and fans of deadline, back to the grindstone.