Listen! The tree frogs

fill Mid Summers Night with joy

and eternal song

"Sunset tonight and Wednesday, and sunrise on Wednesday, are the northernmost of the year, as summer begins on Wednesday at 8:26 a.m. EDT"

Mercury about 10 degrees above the horizon, just barely over the tree tops when I climb up on the roof. My porch roof facing west-northwest gives a perfect vista of the long solstice sunset, and lingering dusk. In the binoculars, the messenger god and thief of Apollo is a bright spot in the peach colored afterglow.

The sour cherries are ripening this week, the first decent crop for some years. The wet spring and lack of a late frost set up the abundant blossoms for a good batch. Now, if the ants and birds don't eat them before I can get to 'em...

Got a good crop of red-raspberries coming too, it looks like, the brambles are thick with green berries, and new fresh stalks coming up in abundance!

Planted in the herb garden (a month late) a handful of basil seeds that Andy had left by my door before he took off for Wales. I hope they will have time to kick in to gear in July and August. I just used up the last of last year's pesto on Saturday!

Those cats are tracking mulberry purple paw prints across the deck and into my butterfly chair. I think it's time to dye that cover anyway. This morning, they sit like sphinxen silent and still awaiting the rustle of the food bag. I have inherited more cats, as the smoke-gray seems to have had a single black kitten under the lean-to. Not that I ever asked for more cats...

Note also that Mercury is at its greatest elongation, about 25 degrees behind the sun, which means that it will soon be retrograde (around July 4th, through the 28th moving back from Leo into Cancer -- next one is 28Oct-17Nov in Scorpio).

Please note that there's an election in November -- during that Mercury retro, as it happens.

Don't forget to throw the bums out, there's no better time for a wholesale house (and Senate) cleaning!

I take the blame for the idiots in power, although I have never once voted for an idiot. (I've voted for some miserable candidates, but that's another issue) But I figure if I don't take the blame, nobody will, certainly, the people who vote for them never seem to get it.

Sorry, I'll try not to let it happen again.