Supposedly we've got rain coming in tonight, then more rain off and on for the rest of the week--a forecast that seems mythical, but I suppose anything's possible.

I'll be heading north with Gretchen this afternoon, and tomorrow will be day 1 of Monson Arts High School, season 6 (or season 5? the Covid gap is confusing). In the morning Gretchen will put on her let's-make-some-stuff show for the whole crew, and after lunch I'll siphon off the writers and start casting the spell.

Ideally I would be healthier than I am, but such is life. I feel like I might be less congested than I was yesterday, and surely tomorrow will be even better? I can only hope.

Yesterday, on my walk through Baxter Woods, I found my first maitake mushrooms of the season. Given the drought, I'd resigned myself to foraging nothing at all, so this was big excitement--a gorgeous fat cluster, in perfect condition. Now we've got two quarts of choice wild mushrooms in the freezer, to add to the other delights I've been stowing during the past few weeks: peaches, green beans, salsa verde, corn cobs for soup base, chicken broth, tomato puree, kale. The dining room is decorated with baskets of green tomatoes. Cucumbers and green beans are still thriving in the garden. Tom brought home a sack of apples from his co-worker, to add to the wealth. Despite our drought struggles, we are basking in harvest luck.

Because my cold-ridden brain has been too dumb to concentrate on The Waves, I've been rereading Pride and Prejudice, always a comforting, hilarious, satisfying experience. It really is a funny book, a treatise on awkward love affairs and aggravating family life. One thing I like (among many) is the ending. After Jane and Bingley and Elizabeth and Darcy settle their romantic hash, Austen gives us a fat glimpse of their futures: who visits them, who continues to be a thorn, etc. She also offers this portrait of how Darcy's younger sister Georgiana fits into the new menage:

Pemberley was now Georgiana's home; and the attachment of the sisters was exactly what Darcy had hoped to see. They were able to love each other, even as well as they intended. Georgiana had the highest opinion in the world of Elizabeth; though at first she often listened with an astonishment bordering on alarm at her lively, sportive manner of talking to her brother. He, who had always inspired in herself a respect, which almost overcame her affection, she now saw the object of open pleasantry. Her mind received knowledge which had never before fallen in her way. By Elizabeth's instructions she began to comprehend that a woman may take liberties with her husband, which a brother will not always allow in a sister more than ten years younger than himself.

I read this passage aloud to Tom, with much satisfaction. "Sportive" as a recipe for wedded happiness: Austen is not wrong.