My full moon photo is 2 days late this month due to the lovely rains we’ve been having, which have brought with them cooler temperatures, a welcome change from the already-summer-like 80s and 90s of last week. This was taken from our back yard this morning, looking up through the limbs and leaves of the sycamore which houses dozens of squirrels and holds the bird feeder where mostly finches come to eat in recent weeks. Today is graduation day at the university and I was lucky to get to work without accident, so many folks driving crazily this morning. After today the hustle and bustle recedes and a calmness settles in for the summer. I have come to terms with the almost certain loss of my job by the end of this year and am settling into working on what excites me rather than churning out grant after unfunded grant, like a failing economic engine for the medical school. I will at least get some papers out, begin imagining new possibilities and working toward some. I know many folks in the same situation- nothing is certain anymore, but there’s an excitement to it, once the sadness and anger subside. I have enjoyed working in our yard this spring, watching the plants we put in last year, planting new ones. It means we don’t get out to the arboretum as much as we have in the past, but I know it so well I can imagine it. We will get back out there soon, before the end of the spring wildflower season, approaching fast! In the meantime, here is a monarda we planted that began blooming last week.

Tomorrow night we will join some friends and read/play-act through Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, I am looking forward to that.