The rain has finally stopped. While the ditches and low places are still mucky, the ponds finally drying up. Everyone is finishing planting or, if they have livestock, is making hay as fast as they can. Round bales wrapped in netting, or twine, or white plastic shrink-wrap dot the fields.

Most of the month of May, I was driving back and forth to Franklin, Indiana to help take care of my father, who had been diagnosed with cancer. It was a swift descent. And I’m still navigating those layers of memories. The funeral however, on June 24, was a great affirmation of his gifts to us.

I am reading Neil Gaiman this summer. We binged on Good Omens. And I learned the very odd, beguiling book I read years ago and loved, The Graveyard Book, was by him. I like his voice. It is utterly human. The characters own their flawed-ness.

I”m also reading Brene Brown’s Braving the Wilderness. I’m finding it incredibly affirming.

I hope to add to this more often this summer. But right now, some tomato plants are due to be planted before the breeze dies and the mosquitos take over for the evening.