'Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.'*

No sooner have I finished knitting a woolly winter hat when summer rises up and smacks us right between the eyes. Augh.

The poor dog looks motheaten at the moment -- like most Goldens, he sheds his undercoat in thick tufts -- but I haven't had the heart to pry him up off the cool tile floor of my sewing/computer room to take him outside for a brushing.

(Not that he hasn't been brushed repeatedly over the last several months, but he's a Golden. They're like that).

For reasons unclear to me, Maeve would rather lie on the bathroom floor, on her back with her paws pointed skyward, than go through the kitty door into the air-conditioned bedroom. If I pick her up and move her into the bedroom, she fusses, a little, but will then resume the flat-on-back-paws-skyward pose.

Fergus simply vanishes in the period between breakfast and 4 or 5 pm. He is, overall, less affected by heat than Maeve is -- he is smaller, lighter, shortcoated rather than longcoated, and prefers warm to cool anyway -- so I don't know exactly where he's hiding. He could be under the living room sofa or in the back of the bedroom closet, or, knowing him, evaporated into the ether until it suits him to coalesce again.

The garden looks a bit ragged about the edges (I really need to cut back the Iceberg rose and what passes for turf needs a mowing) but the new berry bushes seem to be adjusting well and the oakleaf hydrangea is glorious. If the temperatures do cool off tonight and tomorrow as they're supposed to, I may venture outside and try to take a picture of it.

^*Russell Baker, writing in the New York Times, June 27, 1965.