I was on the lake this morning, drinking coffee from a thermos, eating fresh cranberry-oatmeal scones, and watching herons and loons and red-winged blackbirds and a sweet baby turtle who plopped into the shallows as soon as I spied him.

And now the idyll is over, and it is time for Tom to deal with the broken toilet and for me to shave acres of extra-long grass with a wonky push mower.

But we have a dish of ripe tomatoes on the counter and a feast of cucumbers in the garden. The sunflowers are blooming in a riot of red and gold, and vast clouds are sailing over the rippled fields.

Shakespeare wrote:

And every fair from fair sometime declines, 

By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd

And then I wrote:

For every fair does vary in her temper, 

as every course, in changing, is retrimmed