Today was the kind of morning where you need coffee to make the coffee.

Good morning, folks,

Wow, it’s been the kind of week that makes you wish you were in a position to put a frog in Mitch McConnell’s soup, hasn’t it? But at least voting rights are holding the line for now. It will, as always, be a long push back up the hill again, but don’t give up the fight.

It’s just, now and always, time to get our cleats on.

Human rights don’t defend themselves.

We’re entered the part of the year, here in New England, where it’s either dusty and dry or a million shades of lusty rainy green, and this year we get the green. (A pleasant surprise after a dry spring.) My yard is overgrown, and I’ve been out pulling porcelainberry and Japanese knotweed and Asian bittersweet. It’s a loosing battle, but all of that stuff is the Kudzu of the North. At least the birds like the berries but on the other hand that’s why it spreads… assuming I live that long I am, well, not exactly looking forward to forty years of watching my back yard turn tropical.

There aren’t many things flowering yet—the spring blooms are over and the lilies are just barely getting going. But it won’t be too much longer before Rose of Sharon and other late-summer blooms get going.

The rain and air quality have been keeping humans and horses from much strenuous exercise: a walk to the mailbox the other day resulted in a half hour of scratchy throat and so on. This will be an extremely busy week for us, as the manufacturer of the stove we replaced in 2021 is shipping us a new stove because the stove we have is defective and the oven heating element keeps burning out. But we have to get the new stove into the house and set up, the old one boxed up and back outside to be shipped back to the manufacturer, and arrange the freight pickup.

This is also the week we go get Spola from the trainer and bring her home (eee!) and there’s some family medical stuff and it’s all quite the goat rodeo.

I continue to plug away at that novella.

How is the midpoint of your year going?

Best,

Bear