Summer around the corner!

The wild beach roses, white and red, are blooming. It's warm enough to walk barefooted on the sand and to take a chair to the beach and read for a while. Summer is really starting. In yards the rhododendruns are huge and brilliant and the azaleas are shorter but even more brilliant. Grass is lush and birds are busy singing for their mates. Hurray.

Last weekend the tourists began to return. The merchants are happy. The roads are jammed, making a left turn in an exercise in patience and daring -- you just have to brave it sometimes and hope they'll let you go. When I first came here I wondered why my daughter gave me very specific directions how to drive certain places -- she had plotted how to avoid left turns. A good lesson. But sometimes it's unavoidable. Summer does have it's downsides ... but not many.