It's all most August!
Well, hello, ola, bonjour, et al.  Lovely weather here on the Pacific coast. Cool but not wet.
       Gardening has been my latest media.  Herbs, flowers and lettuce!  Fresh garden lettuce is unbelievable!  Strawberry plants are a real bargain because they send out runners and set down roots for new plants.  In this biome, rosemary bushes florish.  Corn does not do so well.  Best flowers for me are nasturtiums and the huge purple bell-shapped flowers of the campanula.  My borage gave up the ghost but my neighbor has a whole field of the heavenly blue thistles.  Artichokes need a lot of room because it is a huge stickerbush with fist-shaped globes appearing on top. Shades of childhood endeavors.

In addition to painting portraits for friends & family, dabbling in abstractions, I pass the time same as other elderly fat ladies of my class making stuffed animals by hand.  Great to sew away while listening to television. Keeps me out of the kitchen making savory stacks of  crepes filled with chopped mushrooms, onions spinach & cheese.

  These are the days of bonnie Prince Georgie, a chili-dog named Weiner, Boewing embarrassed, the Pope mobbed by waves of the faithful (fearing armageddon?) in Brazil and the prosecution of sleezy G.Z. for violating the civil rights of one of us Martins. (minorities may be welcome in politics, but the courtroom is still vintage Fifties). Besides falling asleep to the white-noise of the news, I'll read a paperback or two.

It feels like an early fall.  We usually have a gorgeous Indian Summer on the southwest coast of Washington state.  Good luck with the vicissitudes of weather in the rest of the country (Tipis have a lot going for them).
to whom it may concern, Barbara Martin