Hooray, camping again at Lake Pueblo!  I've been down here four times now--twice camping, twice hiking--and absolutely love the openness, the dryness, and the off-season quiet ( Read more... )

I seem to be in one of my "Woe, I feel disconnected from everything!" moods, which I seem determined to lengthen by remaining disconnected--able to read, but poorly able to respond in any meaningful way to those who most deserve it. So I'm trying to push myself ( Read more... )

For all the others in the region got hammered, our little pocket of earth was passed over by everything save a couple major wind gusts and buckets of rain.

But it certainly looked pretty once it had passed.

( Photos behind the cut... )

In truth, it was working outside. But with temps in the upper 70s--almost unheard of for Indiana in late July--the work felt like play in some ways ( Read more... )

The advantage of working mostly from home--and having days and days off from the parts that don't fall under the mostly--is that there is no downside to being shut in because of the blizzard ( Read more... )

October is my favorite month in Indiana.  If I could make it so, it would be October all year long.

The days are just the right length.  There is that moment in late afternoon when the shadows are noticeably longer than they were last week, the light a deeper shade of gold, and one can feel dusk coming.  Most of the trees are still green, but ( Read more... )

I have never so looked forward to the end of summer.  We usually get about an inch of rain per week.  We've had less than an inch, total, since June 15.  We're supposed to have seven or eight days above 90.  We've had five or six days below 90 since June 15.

It's the heat that's doing in my garden.  Watering produces an overwhelming amount of grass ( Read more... )

It's fairly rare for Indiana to be warned of fire dangers.  Usually it's just too danged wet in the summer.  Wet enough that folks leave piles of brush burning in their back fields and never worry about it.  But this year, drought has turned lawns into straw and acres of corn into fields of yucca-impersonating spikes ( Read more... )