Monsoon

We're in the monsoon season, with heavy rain every day for at least a week. The plants love it; I've never seen the lilies and daylilies put out so generously, and they look great against all the wet dark green foliage. Other constituencies are less enthused and would like sun. I know that once it gets sunny again it will also be steaming hot, though, so I say bring on the gloom.
We had a refugee yesterday morning; during an intense downpour, when Phil went to leave for work, the neighbor's dog Hunter, a big smooshy yellow lab who will lick you to death, ran into the garage & refused to leave. You can't argue with about 90 pounds of smelly sopping wet dog, so we left him there and later, when it eased up, I put him on a lead and walked him home. [Goin' for a walk? Huh? Yeah? Walk? Oh boy!] His folks weren't home and he refused to go into the crawl space, where he is supposed to hide out from the weather (yeah I think that's weird too.) So I let him in to their fenced back yard and it seemed later all was well. Something to be said for having your dog live IN THE HOUSE with its people. Just sayin'.
If you scroll to the bottom of this page you will see a little National Park map with "badges" for all the parks I've been to. It's a free widget on the National Park Service web site. Kind of surprised me how many I had been to, and reminded me of some I really want to visit. Got to get to Glacier, in Montana, before it melts, for example.
Have embarked on a cotton short sleeved cardi of my own design, based on the Incredible Custom Raglan recipe. I have to finish this before starting on Phil's office sweater for the fall, so I am being very earnest and resisting all attempts to be corrupted by new patterns, new yarn, etc. Be firm. Oh, this is hard.