Well, we're back to being child-free for six weeks. Early this morning the boy headed out for his summer trek into the Canadian wilderness, and now I am washing sheets and towels and trying to figure out where to stow all of the stuff he left behind.

Today the temperature will climb into the 80s, I'll be going for a walk with a friend, and then, if it's not too hot, I'll begin to prep the garden for my week away at the Frost Place: e.g,  tear out the bolting lettuce and sow new seeds, stake the tomatoes, harvest sage for drying . . . and so on and so on. At the moment, however, I'm feeling pretty lazy. If I had a deck, I expect I'd be lounging on it.

Has anyone read Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn? I've just started it, and it's not at all what I expected. I'm also not sure how I managed to get away with never reading it before. Maybe because I had the impression it was some sort of feel-good Christmas story--not my favorite genre.