Labors

A breeze verging on "chill" is blowing, making music of the leaves and branches. Blue sky, sunshine--is there anything more lovely than these days when summer and autumn align in near-perfect tension?

My neighbors next door are leveling off a strip of their back yard, preparing to put down grass seed; there is also a small boulder that was just one of many they extracted from that patch--while she moves soil around with a shovel, he whacks at the stone with a sledge hammer. The whole yard is being tamed to within an inch of its life.

The people across the street are having their usual Sunday brunch gathering--yes, every Sunday. So someone is cooking (or at least putting out food).

The cats have been busy shedding so I ought to be busy vacuuming. And Nature knows there's plenty to do in the garden right now (the next door neighbors have been looking pointedly in the direction of my unkempt flowers and shrubs and rose bushes--the other day there was a not-so-friendly, "Wow! That's really going wild!" aimed my way).

But I'm writing and later I'll be grading papers and at some point dinner will happen. The fruits of my labors will not be immediately obvious to anyone other than me.