“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

My rose is ready to show to the world....again. "Night of the Tiger" is as corrected as it's going to ever be, the proof arrived today and is as perfect as I was hoping it would look. The cover is as fine in print as it was in Dee Jae's files on the computer (and to be honest, I think it looks even more awesome in the print form, better than I ever expected it to look).

So, the proper approvals have been accomplished. Amazon has been properly notified and is finalizing the entry onto their site. The Kindle, I'm told, will be up for sale within the next 48 hours, and the book should appear, with the title "Night of the Tiger: The Author's Cut", within the next week. We're still trying to work out the details for the listing, but Northern Bard Publications wants to do a "Buy Two, Get One Free" sale through January 1st on the Northern Bard editions....

And, even as we complete this book, my mind is already turning back to the historical romance. All the advances I've made recently in the search for my ancestors has me looking back, and it seems time for this one to come next.....

It is, after all, already over 600 pages strong.....

*sighing as I settle in to begin editing first, as I suspect there is a lot more history than most will want to read in their historical romance......*

So, my "rose" becomes a fireblossom....

Maybe I'll explain what that means before the next book is published...

Maybe not....

*evil grin rising*

UPDATE: November 28 - After a couple of minor issues (I love - note the sarcastm - how advance emails don't always prevent minor issues from happening, no matter how many t's I cross and how many i's I dot), we have the newest edition on Amazon ( http://www.amazon.com/Night-Tiger-Authors-Cut-Book/dp/0578172690/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1448717933&sr=8-1&keywords=debi+emmons ), but we've hit a little snag on the "buy two, get one free" until January 1st deal...

Amazon tells me they don't offer that deal any more, so if you're interested in that one, and you don't mind a little "one on one" interaction between yourself and an author, I have a Pay Pal account attached to my web site that will allow you to purchase the books direct through me. If you live outside of the United States and don't mind paying the shipping charges, I'll even discuss that option with the printer, allowing you to get the delivery hot off the presses.....

Unless you would like me to sign the book(s) and send the package from the local post office, in which case, you can drop me a line at debi.emmons.author@gmail.com....

And since I'm in sales person mode, how about a nice piece of swamp land in Northern Maine, just off the snowmobile trails, with great hunting options......

Yeah....

As necessary as it is to play the salesperson from time to time in these blogs, I really hate to be "pushing the brand" that hard...

Thank you for reading my blogs, even when I have my salesperson hat on.

A December release for the third Northern Bard offering and finding Kunta Kinte

We're in the last stages of the publishing process for the Northern Bard Publications editions of all three of the books (so far) in The Tiger Series - and will be offering a special "if you buy all three you save [an undecided amount]". I'd like to see it be along the lines of "third one free", but the finance director would like to see more money come in toward expenses and our cover artist is working on the next projects....talking to me excitely about cover ideas when we haven't decided which book is up next.....

I'm still reeling from the fact that our first "Northern Bard Publication" was just last year - this month in fact - and we've already managed to re-edit, re-cover, and re-release two more books already.

I wonder if my compadres at Northern Bard will get upset if I start calling them both slave drivers....

In the meantime, while waiting for my daughter to see a lawyer about a divorce, I had an "aha" moment in the special room for Maine genealogical research in the city. There was a statement written out by a lawyer from Somerville, Maine that another researcher had spoken of that mentioned my great-grandfather's name. (I've been trying to find my great-grandfather's parents for 35 years, but a lot of records were destroyed by fires before there was a central place for them to be kept....) I had read it once, but didn't fully recall the entire piece, so I looked it up again, as the first time, I was answering a question from the other researcher as to whether I might have information about this woman, as she and her husband had spent six weeks with the James and Susan I was seeking information on....

The second reading proved I had overlooked a few important things that coincided with what I was seeing in census reports.

As Kurt Vonnegut says  "Listen"

The only time I see James and Susan together in census reports is in 1870 in Albion, Maine. Per that record (as well as in the family bible recording such things), they were wed in April of that year, and he is listed as 19/her as 17. (Census reports used to be done when someone showed up at your house and started asking questions. A lot of times, in my experience, incorrect ages were given, but when my own father had to carry our birthdays in his wallet and do the math when asked ages.......)

Earlier this week, deciding to try to find more about the mysterious Mary Dow Evans who spent time with James and Susan in Albion for the six weeks prior to the birth of their second child (one of those things that I keep thinking would be more of a "family" type thing to do rather than a :"kind neighbor to Susan's parents" type thing), I started looking at the census reports for Palermo. Elisha and Mary are right next to Susan's parents in 1870. Mary, whose husband is listed by the other researcher as having died in October 1880, is listed as alone in the June census of Palermo - right next door to the now widowed Susan Dow and her three children. Susan's parents, James and Fannie, live on the other side of her.

An earlier foray into the census reports on a hunch, as several family members insist that James Parker Dow was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts and was adopted had been done. There is a city in Maine, incorporated in 1851 as Chelsea, as well - and there is a small family in the 1860 census that has a father, William, mother, Mary, a married daughter, Eliza, her husba -nd, and two children under the age of 5. Going back to the 1850 census, there are William, Mary, Eliza - and an older son named Llewellyn (my father's middle name, which we never figured out where it came from, since his mother named all her children after related people). In 1860, William was listed as 70 and Mary as 54. In the 1870 census, Mary is listed as 65. In 1880, she is listed as 75.

I suspect that I have my great-great-grandmother in my sights at the moment, so I decided to re-read the paper that the other researcher recommended....

And I heard the theme from The Twilight Zone as I read through the entire paper the second time.....

Written April 10, 1878, (and from the sound of the piece, to explain that Elisha and Mary hadn't abandoned their farm in Palermo, but had spent some time elsewhere), A. B. Bowler notes that, after marrying in 1864, Mary and Elisha moved to Palermo in 1867 - and into a farm right next door to James and Fannie Belden, per the 1870 census, which, in my mind, gives James, who would have been about 16 at the time of the move, three years to fall in love with his neighbor, Susan, and properly court her. They note that they moved some of their things to Albion for "temporary purposes" in the spring of 1873, returning to Palermo on June 10 (my grandfather's brother was born on June 14) after "five weeks and six days" in the home of Susan and James Dow (whom it is noted in this piece was "now deceased", as family records show James passed away in February of 1876). They moved back into their house in Palermo and had been there for almost two years at the time of the disposition by the lawyer, which was listed as having been marked by an "x" from both Mary and Elisha, neither of whom, it seems, could read or write.

Going back into Ancestry.com when I arrive home, I look back at Llewellyn Dow, whom a couple of relatives are trying to claim couldn't possibly be related because he was in northern Maine and the rest of the family I'm investigating live close to Augusta in the southern part of the state. Once again, the theme from The Twilight Zone again begins to play when I find Llewellyn's death certificate, listing his father as William Dow, no mother listed at all (perhaps one of the "family feuds" that make it impossible for me to share such information without hiding everyone's emails, as there are certain family members who don't speak to other certain family members?) - and his "place of birth is" (drum roll please): Somerville, Maine.

My little inner Sherlock Holmes is jumping for joy, as all of these little "connections" are making me feel that, after all this time, I've found the right leads to try to locate my great-grandfather's line.

Now I just have to have a couple of days to travel to places like Enfield, Maine, whose records on this era appear not to have been shared with Ancestry.com and also don't appear in the Portland Room (where the Maine records for the area), so I have to go to the source - the town office, local library, or perhaps even the cemetery - to get the confirmations on William, Eliza and the two children who seem to have died there.

Hopefully, Enfield didn't have a fire that destroyed their records.

And thus, the cobbler's children have no shoes.....

My mother used to say what I used as the title A LOT when we were growing up in reference to the fact that, even though my dad worked as an oil delivery person for the store next door, he would often forget to deliver to his own house until the tank was so dry that he had to clear sludge out of the lines before the furnace would run. She still says it in reference to my own husband, especially when I share with her what I'm about to share with you....

You see, my husband is what they call an HVAC Tech. HVAC stands for "Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning". He's been doing this for 30 years, so he's highly respected at his work site as the "go to" man for any answers to difficult problems that they may be having.

Unfortunately, in our own home, we have a furnace that has seen better days. When we moved in 17 years ago, it was soon discovered that the automatic water feed for the steam heat boiler no longer worked, so when the heat doesn't kick on when expected, it means that there isn't enough water in the boiler for it to work, so it shuts itself off rather than burn out any parts.

The current rate of having to fill the boiler should be about once a day, but it's usually accomplished by yours truly when I, the first one out of bed every day because I was raised in a farm-like situation in which my eyes open between 4 and 5 a.m. and I just can't stay in bed once I'm fully awake, will discover that the house is much colder than it should be. I then have to go out to the bulkhead in the garage - totally unheated and generally cold enough to see one's breath, even sometimes during the summer - or risk life and limb to go down the interior staircase, which has been slowly rotting since well before we bought the house and may well just collapse one of these mornings. Once in the basement, dodging the hanging spiders and spider webs, I make my way to the furnace and slowly add cold water until the level reaches a certain spot in the "sight glass" that indicates how full the water is, usually getting deafened in the process when the furnace hits the point that it has enough water to run and starts itself up...

Many discussions have gone on about this boiler, starting with my husband stating shortly after we first moved in that he would fix the auto-fill before he decided that, even with the proper auto-fill, the furnace (which at that time also provided the hot water for the house) wouldn't be able to keep up. Instead of the auto-fill, we bought a water heater to allow us to shut the furnace off during the summer months, saving heating oil. There has been talk of replacing the old furnace with something newer and more efficient, but we can't just replace the old piece of junk in the basement, because steam heat isn't as efficient as forced hot water heat, which would involve somewhere around 130 hours of work to re-pipe the whole house. There is also an argument about the cost.

In short, the work that he gladly does for other people on weekends to put money into his private savings account for the fishing trips he likes to do all summer can't possibly happen in his own house because it would take away his "free time"....even though the end result would be more money in the family budget at the end of it all because of the savings on the oil we have to use each winter to heat this poorly insulated farmhouse.

And thus, the cobbler's children have no shoes, because the thing that he does every day (and therefore is well paid for) can't possibly happen for free for his own family.....

Which is why, even though all my Christian friends keep telling me that "money is the root of all evil", I keep playing the lottery, praying to win the kind of money that would allow me to either hire someone else to come in to replace the furnace or, if I got REALLY lucky, would allow me to have this house torn down and a better, more efficient building put up with brand new electric wires (as this place has the old fabric-wrapped electric wires from the early days of electricity and may well cause a fire at any time) and the furnace my husband thinks of as the best possible solution for heating the house equally.

If course, if we were still young chickens with healthy bodies, I could take a page from my first novel and go work at a local strip club to earn extra cash for such a venture, but who wants to pay to see an almost 55-year-old woman with belly fat and saggy boobs dance around naked?

*le sigh*

Ah well, at least we have the new cover for the Northern Bard Publications version of "Night of the Tiger" (to be marketed as "Night of the Tiger: The Author's Cut" because we made some corrections to the tale). Hopefully I'll have the PDF of the interior ready for the printer tonight and we can release this one - with the option of doing all three books of The Tiger Series as a special priced set for Christmas 2015.

For those interested in seeing the new cover, here it is, with many thanks to Dee Jae Dow for all her hard work:

Thank you for letting me rant.

Now, for my next trick, I need to find the source of the "rodentia carcass" smell that is permeating my office space because my daughter's cat obviously mauled something enough to kill it, but didn't manage to keep his teeth on it long enough to produce it for us to praise him over it. Considering that the 9 bodies he's managed to show us over the past two months included mice, moles, and even a chipmunk (he's an indoor cat, so how that happens is beyond me), I'm almost scared to find the final resting place for whatever is stinking up the joint, but it has to happen before my nose hairs catch fire....

Laterz.....

Addendum 11/12/15: I think I might be in shock!

After the "freak out" I did on Monday (mostly because the rickety stairwell has started shuffling around when I go down it, which scared me half to death) and letting him see me go back down on Tuesday to refill (at which point he tried to pass off that I hadn't added much water, so I told him he was in charge of Wednesday, while he had a day off and I had to work), he came back from fixing a friend's heat with an automatic water feeder for our furnace!! He put it in this morning before going to work! Apart from going down now and then to check on the amount of oil in the tank, I don't have to go visit the spiders in the cellar any more!!!

Maybe it's just going to be a good day, as I also went into my email to find the message that the new version of "Night of the Tiger" meets the printing tests, so I've ordered the proof copy to make sure it prints to my specs...(and the digital file for the Kindle looks awesome, I must say!)

Thank you if you prayed for a fast resolution to this issue! I'm seriously in shock, and it may take a few days before it sinks in that I won this little battle!  *BIG grin as I go off to see what other mischief I can get into with the dog and cat today*

Addendum # 2 - 1/14/16:  Thinking of how much my legs love the auto-feeder....

My husband asked me last night if I had noticed anything about the automatic water feeder he put onto the furnace. I've only been downstairs since the original post to check the oil in the oil tank, so I had to admit that I barely looked at the nifty box with the glowing red light...

He told me that the box recorded how many times it's added water since he attached it, and in curiosity, I finally went downstairs just a few moments ago to look....

281

That's how many "add ins" the auto feeder has recorded in just two days over two full months.

281

And he didn't understand why I didn't want to be going down over those rickety stairs, possibly waking the raptor who lives in a dark corner under said stairs and making it opt to collapse the stairs with me on them, in order to enjoy the warmth from the furnace so far this winter.

281....

In 63 days...

Shall I make my hubby something special for dinner on my next day off for saving my legs all those trips?

I suspect I might.....

And now, a word from our sponsor....

I always loved that line in the old cartoons....

I've been re-editing "Night of the Tiger" and plan on calling it "Night of the Tiger: the Author's Cut". I finished a couple of days ago. Of course, we're also working on the covers at Northern Bard Publications, and the cover isn't quite ready yet due to a little miscommunication between myself and the photoshop artist...

Or so I thought, until she grudgingly showed me what she has so far (although the paint part isn't working quite as she wants), and we're doing well on it. Looking very nice so far, with the barn house against one of my photos of a mountain pass in autumn....

I think the Northern Bard Publications edition is going to be very nice indeed, and will be finished as soon as Dee Jae gets a run down street at dusk and gets the sign for BoxCars photoshopped in....

I really love working with creative types...

Loading my weapons.....mostly to see if my government is watching....*grin*

I should be old enough to know better, but I always make the mistake of going into my Facebook account right after seeing something on the news about yet ANOTHER shooting in America....and have to wade through all the posts by those who want to have our Constitution totally torn out of the laws and by-laws of our country as well as by those who insist that our forefathers put in the fact that we have the right to bear arms and that, by all that is holy, we will not give up that right.....

As the third child of four in my family, I have always been in the middle of arguments. I have learned that little trick of seeing both sides of an argument - and if it's a good sized crowd and I think I can get away with it, I'll argue BOTH sides...loudly...then leave when it starts getting into the time someone is going to throw a punch....

*missing my cousin, who was so like me that he joined in the fun...*

But to the current argument...

When our country was founded, one needed a gun to survive, and at one point, the governing country tried to remove the guns from this country and there was a rebellion. TAH DAH! New country under our own rules. The rules were written according to what out forefathers were coming here to get away from...

One of those rules was the 2nd Amendment, which states "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." (from https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/second_amendment) 

Simple enough, until we start letting the leaders we've put in charge keep changing things...

\Like closing mental institutions and turning the crazies out into the streets....

Then telling the law abiding citizens, some of whom hunt for meat for the family table, that they're going to (possibly) ban all guns, no matter what you might use it for, because the crazies are out there and, well, they can get guns! Guns kill people, not the crazies that are out there, unmedicated and with little voices inside their brains because the government closed the hospitals with the rubber rooms where we used to put the crazies...and if Johnny was in a rubber room on medication instead of skipping a medication that the doctor's told Johnny's mom he should take, but he doesn't want to take, and it's considered child abuse if she tries to make him.....

Of course, I could argue that, since we can't get unmedicated, crazy boy Johnny off the street, maybe we should ban guns....but.....

Let's just leave my little rant right there, shall we?

In the meantime, I won't be adding to the furor by naming any of the beasts who have chosen to pull a gun - or a knife, as recently happened in a town not far from here, where a woman got knifed to death by a total stranger over a look given in a parking lot of a grocery store - to end someone's life on a whim. I won't be adding to their insanity by making them more famous.

I joke that insanity doesn't run through my family, it walks through and gets to know each of us personally, but my family always taught me that human life is valuable. I've lost too many loved ones to want to give anyone else that pain for the sake of having my name put into some record somewhere as the person who blew a gasket and took some ungodly number of people along for the ride. I refuse to give the crazy ones who opt to do such a horrible thing more press.

In the meantime, the re-edit of "Night of the Tiger" is going very well, as I'm catching a few other things that were missed, whether by yours truly or the other editors, and keep finding myself spending more and more time there than reading the madness that my Facebook has currently become....

And the other characters from other unfinished tales that have been started are still waiting for me to finish this project and work on theirs....

And another of the Bentons is starting to whisper about her story....

"Yes, It's A Mess, But It's MY Mess!"

Like most of the creative people I grew up around, I'm a bit of a slob. I cheerfully admit this on my Facebook page with memes like "My house looks like I'm losing a game of Jumanji!" and "My housework style can best be described as 'There appears to have been a struggle...' "....

But ask me where something is, and I will often be able to go to a specific place in the mess and pull out whatever you asked me for. The system appears to be total chaos, but somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind, I remember exactly where I last saw something.....

Unless someone else in the house has moved it in an effort to "clean up" for me.....

And since we're all different people, they put the item where they feel it logically belongs, such as a packet of clothesline that I purchased in the spring, while I was out of work after a surgery. The intent was that I would bring in the metal clothes line support from outside my kitchen window, take off all the blackened clothesline that it came with many, many, MANY moons ago, and then re-string it with the new line.

In April, however, the metal pole was solidly frozen into the cement block that supports it, so I set the clothesline on the table until the ground thawed - and have never made it back to that project, as it's been so cold and wet, I haven't wanted to hang clothes on that line. The clothesline packet has been sitting silently on a corner of the kitchen work table, reminding me that it must happen, but other, more pressing duties have been getting done first.

Then, this past week, when I discovered that a slightly musty smell in the corner of the front room was an Australian Outback coat that was put there dry, but has gotten moldy because of all the humidity, I discovered that my other clothesline, on the front porch, had dry rotted. I've decided that the line I've been mostly using because it's at least under a roof needs to be replaced. The clothesline on the table will no longer mock me because it will be in use, holding things like a heavy oilskin coat (which is cleaned by a vinegar and water solution and a stiff brush followed by hosing it down, making the one article of clothing weigh almost as much as yours truly) so they can dry without shrinking in the dryer.

I started looking for the clothesline almost two hours ago, as it was no longer on the corner of the table. Either someone else has decided to "clean", or I, in a story-induced daze, have moved it to another "logical" location. I naturally start with looking around the various things in the kitchen, through piles of important mail, stacked according to which family member they belong to, then look in all the places I would have moved it to if I was thinking about the current works in progress (as there is always more than one).

No luck.

Next, I try to think about the other members and where they may have moved a roll of clothesline. None of the more logical spots yield the clothesline, and I'm soon back at the table, looking at the spot it was all summer, recently scrubbed clean by a helpful hand....

My eyes travel around the kitchen, and as I text the only family member currently awake, I'm opening drawers and cabinets, just systematically looking EVERYWHERE. The hubby has seen the clothesline on the table and heard my jokes about "finding the time", but didn't move it. By now, I've moved on into other rooms, and on a whim, open a tub with our camping gear still in it that has been left in the front room until camping season is done for the summer. Someone must have thought the clothesline was for taking camping, even though we have enough camping rope to hog tie a whole football team, as there it is!

I check to find that my whole "grab the clothesline and re-string the front porch" scheme has used up an hour and 45 minutes of my day. The laundty that I started, wanting to hang it on the clothesline, is sitting in the washer, done its cleaning cycle some time ago, mocking me.....

And, as I walk back into the kitchen and survey the mess I made searching for the clothesline, I pray that I don't die before I get this straightened out, because I'm hearing a familiar line from a lot of crime dramas on television....

"They ransacked the place!"

Feeling like time is slipping away......

As September 11th hit this year, I was feeling very upset, as it feels like it was just yesterday that I was coming home from a hernia surgery in April. I still am having twinges as I try to work the stomach muscles, still finding weak spots that I need to work a little slower, but tomorrow makes 5 full months since that surgery....

And then, while watching the news and trying not to get drawn back into the fear and anger that the media still keeps trying to make us feel 14 years after the attack on the U.S. and the fall of the Twin Towers in New York, there's a weather report that states that some parts of New England, including the southern Maine section where I live, is in drought condition...

"What?" I say aloud - and realize that I sound like the minion that my 3-year-old granddaughter is becoming adept at imitating. (For those who don't know what I'm talking about, here's the clip: https://youtu.be/MfylJy_nMbM )

Most of the summer, I haven't gone out for my normal "sunrise paddles" because it's been cold and rainy. We normally have our air conditioners in the windows by mid-June, but with very few exceptions, we were quite comfortable with just running fans at night and shutting them off shortly after sunrise, keeping the inside of the house at a quite comfortable 65-69 degrees Fahrenheit, which is about where we try to keep it when the air conditioners are in and running. Most days when I've come home from work, my daughter has been wrapped in a blanket complaining of the cold, when she would normally be asking if I could take her down to a friend's camp down the road for a swim after work because, even with the a/c, it's still too hot inside to be comfortable.

The one and only day that I actually got into my bathing suit this year to take my daughter and the dog for a swim, which was actually just a couple of days ago, the water was still very cold in the little cove that is normally as warm as bath water on a hot day, making it necessary to swim out to our friend's float to dive into the deeper water in order to cool off. Needless to say, with back damage that makes my left leg go numb and stop working if the water is too cold, I didn't even fully immerse myself even on that one very warm afternoon.

So how in the devil did we get "abnormally dry" in what I've been calling "the summer that never was"? We've had more flood wanings than we've ever had this summer, and more severe thunderstorms than normal, making several tornadoes appear - something that I never heard of happening much in Maine when I was growing up. (This web site http://www.tornadoproject.com/alltorns/metorn.htm notes the tornadoes that DID happen in Maine, but it was a very rare occurance from the 1960's, when I was born, and has been happening with more and more frequency in recent years......)

"So, what did you do with your summer?" I was asked yesterday by a friend who happened to be shopping at the Staples where I work.

I poppped off with "I worked all summer", but after she left, I started seriously thinking about it. Where did all the time go that I would have normally spent in taking my family swimming, camping and on picnics? Looking out the window at my very overgrown garden, which I'll have to seriously hustle to get cleaned up for winter due to all the rain, it's readily obvious where I DIDN'T spend any time, but what did I honestly do?

I've spent a few days doing what I call "bugging out" with Dee Jae, finding barns and silos with her that can be used to make up part of the cover for the Northern Bard Publications edition of "Night of the Tiger", since Selene has informed us many times that the book sales haven't been great enough for us to think about hiring another model. (Dee Jae has had the idea that she can photoshop a front cover showing a run down city street with a Kawasaki Ninja motorcycle on the sidewalk and a sign over it reading "BoxCars" to represent the place where Kyle meets the Lady Tigre and, for the back cover, she can photoshop the photos we've taken this summer to "build" the barn house where the tiger woman finds safety for a while.)

I've spent a little time organizing things inside the house and editing "Night of the Tiger" to take out the glaring errors - including a paragraph in Chapter Eighteen that was changed by the editors at Write Words Inc. that changes what I consider to be the pivotal part of the whole story into something I keep getting emailed by fans who are making that same minion "What" noise about because it makes absolutely no sense that my hero, who has discovered a secret that the woman he loves has been carefully hiding for seven years, answers his own question.

And what else have I done?

Just as I told my friend, I've been at work. In one way, all the extra hours have been nice, because my husband drops to a "regular" work week of 40 hours over the summer, so many years, we would be struggling to make ends meet, but this year, we've actually had a little extra money for such things as the wonderful "Anniversary Week" that I wrote about in an earlier blog post.

But I still feel like I didn't get a summer to enjoy.

Oh well, I guess I shouldn't be grumpy about it, because this means my favorite holiday, Halloween, is right around the corner. I just hope Mother Nature has had enough fun drowning my flower garden, most of which grew mold instead of flowers, so that I can take the next couple of weeks of days off to pull all the weeds and plant a few more bulbs before the ground starts to freeze. It's looking very hopeful for this Tuesday and Thursday so far....as long as the weather report I saw about "drought" is otherwise accurate.

Goodbye Summer of 2015! May the summer of 2016 see me putting air conditioners into my windows again and having the dry days to work in the flower garden so that, at this time next year, I'll see the last summer blooms instead of the weeds of neglect when I go down the path to my driveway.