Even though her brothers rioted until after two thirty this morning and kept us awake, when the alarm went off at five-fifteen this morning Jean and I got up and we left for the airport very nearly when we intended to.

It's a year since that other long trip she went on and her leave-taking today was very different from last year's.  I was expecting it to be, but not in the way it was.  Experience teaches us, they say and in this case I believe Jean knew that adventures include loneliness and homesickness and uncertainty along with fun, new friends and fabulous sights.  She was quiet, felt anxious, and clung to her father and me before she left.  But of course, she did leave to see the big world.

I'll be near the phone today, just in case the arrangements that haven't been communicated to her don't in fact exist and she is stranded in Newark, New Jersey with no ticket to get further along on her German study trip.

And I cried one tear less than I did last year, when I cried one tear.  Crying doesn't keep them home, you know.  It doesn't make it less important to go out and see the world.  And so, what's the point? 

It's Independence Day here, and instead of the red crepe paper bedecking bicycles in the parade, and the bright white clouds in a breathetaking blue sky,  it is gray and drizzly. 

The drums that boom time for the high school band that warms up on the field behind my house played for only about ten minutes, and then thunder took over the percussion part.  There were no people trespassing through the yard to go over to the parade route that passes City Hall.  The big boxes of ice cream and jugs of lemonade will be welcome leftovers for someone tomorrow.  Usually overheated parade marchers and flushed parade watchers welcome the cold treats after the march is over.  The treats will cheer up someone during an ordinary, hard to get back to work day tomorrow.

Three pairs of planes have done their traditional fly over, about an hour late, I'd say.  Even viewed through a window they were a fine sight.  Each pair flying one after another, too close to be practical, they flew off before the next pair made the low pass.

The sky is lighter now, and down the street Connie's son has broken out some firecrackers.  But the main sound I hear comes from the birds that sit on the phone wire, enjoying the relative quiet of an atypical Fourth of July morning.

Parker's been at a loss this summer.  His good buddy Brian has gone on to hang out in the heady company of other teenagers who are starting high school in the fall, while Parker is still in that school of children who are still in Middle School.  Parker is the equivelent of the last kid with a driver's license or the first geezer to get a senior citizens' discount.  He is just at an unacceptable age.

He's been home too much lately, sleeping too much, and way too ornery.  I've done my best to join him in his interests, but violent video games and Marilyn Manson music are just a bit beyond my ability to be flexible. 

We have embarked on Plan B.

As I write this, Parker is seated to my left.  He has a cup of coffee from that Italian deli I like parked next to him, the identical match to the one I have.  He is intently playing Halo on a wonderfully fast computer with a big beautiful monitor.  I am intently blogging on the same kind of machine.   Once he got a load of how that baby could deliver a list of coveted games to his play-hungry fingertips, he turned to me and eagerly asked if we could come here again.  He has stopped wincing and looking sideways at me at every swear word or curse that bursts out of the mouth of one of the more than dozen gamers in the place.  He has learned that I don't care, as long as it's not his voice, his mouth that launches the aural bomb.

Parker is my guest today at my sanctum sanctorum, my inviolable retreat.

The Interneteria has been opened to him.

It's Saturday morning here and I've got housework to do before I can go into the garden. Working near a window, I have a good view of my backyard. it seems that the only living souls outside are animals. Different bird trills are coming through the window, so distinct from one another that I wonder what a bird might find to talk about.

I see one of the singers, sitting on a wire, and appearing to have a spirited conversation with himself.  Every once in a while he readjusts his wings, looking much like someone who's jacket has ridden up and needs re-organizing on his back. He rolls his head a bit too; I wonder if he's tense, talking to his mate hidden in the pine tree behind him.  It looks like he's up to something; perhaps she's to be an accessory in the crime.

A pidgeon, whose breastfeathers glow gold in the morning light is on a wire in front of him, and now that the first bird is quiet I can hear the hollow woodwind sound of its call. From a distance that affords them some privacy, two goldfinches sit companionably close to each other. They flew to the wire together, and sit, clearly a couple travelling together. They are silent, ah! They just flew off together, yes companions. A robin took their place briefly, but with a vehement exclamation! lit off urgently to take care of some pressing business.

The bird that got me started on all of this wondering is hidden in a tree or shrub to the north, while the other birds are to the west.

The northern bird has been sending out the same call over and over, and to my human ears it is a fretful melody. I can imagine she has a sick little bird in the nest, and she is worrying over it. The plaintive call doesn't vary--well, not to my insensitive human ears--and I find I hope the little one wakes up this morning feeling well.

Oh! The godfinches are back, and they are having words! and another one came up and was immediately included in the arguement. The three took off. I wonder what the bird version of "taking it outside" is, because that is certainly what the three of them are going to do. Was it two females fighting over the male, I wonder, or two males going to battle over a female. The early bird, I suppose; and think that for humans, it's not Saturday mornings that lead to scenes like this, but more likely Saturday night.

This year's garden reports have been few and far between and one reason may well be that mosquitos, too, have been few and far between.

Mosquitos here are different from their species-mates in other areas. They aggressively feast at the human buffet even in the middle of the sunniest, windiest days, as well during nightime hours when normal members of genus culex feed. The number and vitality here may well be because of the area itself. The town where I live, which used to a sleepy bedroom community outside a bustling city was quite simply built on Mosquito Heaven.

Oh, it's marshy origins are cleverly disguised now, by houses, and public buildings and more stores than the population of the country would really need to supply them, but the little flying hypodermic needles can see through the dressing up and still find the pockets of swamp that are really what the area is. Humans are on their turf. Heck, humans are the turf in the sense of surf and turf. I don't know what they use for the surf part, but I'm usually very aware of what the turf portion is.

But as I was saying, the skeeters have been eerily absent this year. We've had some rain in the past couple of weeks but not enough to raise this year's crop of bloodsuckers. So if reports about the state of my garden have been so few as to not even qualify as a series, it's because I'm outside in it, not inside at the keyboard, typing with one hand and scratching with the other one.