Pond, wind

When I visited last weekend, the pond at the farm was perhaps murkier than before, but no smaller. My dad reports having seen a heron and egrets drinking and perhaps hunting around the pond. When I went to look around, I found the heron's tracks, huge things much bigger than my hand.



The lilies are blooming a bit in the mud.



Tropical Storm Lee, which dumped a lot of much-needed rain on Louisiana and and a lot of not-at-all-needed rain in the Northeast, coincided with cooler weather for us, delicious nights where it was pleasant enough to leave the windows open, and days in which you wouldn't break into a sweat just stepping outside. But it also brought a stiff, desiccating wind, and by the end of the first day, the grass I'd noticed in my parents' yard looking encouragingly green was already starting to shrivel. We haven't had a drop since, either. Waiting. Watching the wildfires further south, hoping ours stay in the hundreds of acres instead of the thousands.

I will have something besides drought to talk about soon!