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At first the storm that blew through the North Bay today didn’t carry enough rain to turn the driveway into the swamp it was most of the winter, but it did bring enough wind that my power blinked on and off all afternoon, making it hard to get any work going with the kind of continuity that makes for productive results. It was also enough to keep my lawn guy from finishing the yard as promised, but I only half expected him. I do know he’ll be back because I still have his money.
Then, at just about the time I was ready to walk out to the end of the driveway and pick up my mail, the skies opened up. Rainwater dripped madly off the eaves and filled the birdbath, which for the last few weeks has been hidden in the high grass in my garden. Now I can see it again, and so can the birds. I’m sure they’ll be back soon; it never takes them long to find it after it’s been filled.
Some of the time I would have been working I spent finishing The Irresistible Henry House, by Lisa Grunwald. I have to say I liked the first half of the novel better than the second half, but only because it ends with a slog through the drug-addled Sixties, a place and time I don’t revisit on purpose (except musically, of course).
But the book effectively explores a fascinating conceit: What becomes of the practice babies given by orphanages to college home economics programs (which actually happened from the 1920s to the 1960s). I guess another reason I liked the first half better is that we can see the development of the main character from infancy through childhood and on to the edge of adulthood. Once he grows up, he starts feeling like everybody else in the late Sixties. I was there, and I remember only too well.
And by the way, the Sixties drug culture was never a problem for me personally, except for how it affected the people around me. I was never tempted, and I say that not to make myself seem better or worse than anyone else, but only because it’s just the plain truth. | 
