MONDAY

I have definitively not opened the window for the unicorn meat eating cats today. The day is starting out with gray skies, with a touch of mist on my face, as I take Max out.

I am turning in the summer clothes for the winter clothes, exchanging them out, as it were. I harvested the last of the lavender yesterday to pack away with the summer things. And I am unpacking the winter clothes which are packed away with last year's lavender...I feel very Jane Austen as I do this.

That's what I call the winter walks: the Jane Austen season. If you read her stories with an eye on the background, you'll notice her characters go walking year round. Considering the time her novels are set in, what else would they do? Her characters are not women to embroider all winter now, are they? No, her women are big, blossoming, thinking women, who do not scorn to get some snow on their shoes...nor will they shy from sinking up to their ankles in mud.

I am able to walk Max again, after spraining my ankle. He is a 50 (U.S.) lbs. weight on the end of a horse lead rope. And he is a swinging weight at that. Like a fish on a line with a sinker, he struggles from one side of the street to the other, scoping out the houses with the dogs inside, all who leap to the window at his approach and make known their angst at his peeing on their mailbox posts. Theirs, mind you. Theirs.

Most notable are the white, Standard Poodle, who is a fair size to leap that fence, and the Boxer and Dalmatian set who are always outside to greet us. The small yappers that people label dogs, are negligible. Although I must say that Max enjoys the company of small dogs. As a Corgi mix, he apparently has a complex about his height, and is intimidated by the interest of the larger dogs, when they are not fenced.

It's time to get back to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil which is not shaping up to be anything like the movie yet...