Temps are back up into the blister zone. The porch is hot, but not nearly as hot as the house this time of evening. The saucers under the potted plants are mosquito nurseries (and the only moisture around other than the birdbathes), but I'll carry a box fan out there in a bit, sip a glass of wine, and wave as neighbors and townsmen walk by. We'll commiserate about the heat and the drought. I'll lament the loss of another beloved dahlia, baked to death in the parched ground, or marvel at the ability of the bronze fennel to just keep going dispite only a trace of rain in the last 4 to 6 weeks.

Some one might ask about the music drifting out of the wide-opened front window, and I will proudly tell them it is a new CD I just got today from my friend Barry Finn, as fine a singer of chanty and work song as one might want to hear. That might lead to a discussion to the effect of, Must One have a New England Accent to Do a Chanty Justice? Or maybe not.

Some one will tell me what ridiculously high price that bungalow down on Margaret Lane went for just before the mortgage market went wacko. A disinterested third party watching from a little distance would be able to read the unspoken thoughts on both our faces 'What would my charming old wreck of a hundred-year-old house sell for?' Then watch each of us shake our heads, torn between a safe retirement and a priceless sense of place and community.

Janie