What's your weather?

[southerntransplant]

Rain. Lots. Of. Rain.

[mamselle]

Today? Perfection (yesterday, too).  James Russell Lowell wrote "What is so rare as a day in June?/Then if ever come perfect days."  Well, he did live in New England, where one sickens of winter, but I'm not entirely distant from that locus, so a fine June day near Boston can be a fine June day hereabouts, too.

I don't call Lowell exactly a poetaster, but he is certainly a dim light in the poetic firmament now, despite this good Q/A that has long stuck in my mind (usually surfacing on a fine June day).  Not taking time looking up the quotation, who can name the poem it comes from?  It's the first two lines, too.  And I had to look it up again, anyway.  Then he goes on about trees and flowers and birdies.  I stopped.

I'd have to look it up to answer, but I do believe his gravestone, set in a veritable sculpture garden of neoclassical urns and orbs, is modeled after colonial gravestones made two centuries earlier--because he inhabited a (still-standing) colonial-era house nearby, and wanted his gravestone to go with it.

(Apropos of current events, too, that home was the site in which the concept of "gerrymandering" was born...by a previous owner.)

M.

OK, found it: "The Vision of Sir Launfal," at:

   https://poets.org/poem/vision-sir-launfal

And here are links to the homesite

   https://www.cambridgeusa.org/listing/elmwood

and gravestone:

   https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/648/james-russell-lowell/photo#view-photo=76383

The stone is closely fashioned after the work of colonial carver Joseph Lamson (L 17th-E 18th c.); the too-squared-off leaves in the side panels and the typographic style of lettering in the tablet betray its derivative nature, but it's a very good effort. Lamson stones are found in abundance in the Old Cambridge Burying Ground in the center of Harvard Square, about a mile or so from Mt. Auburn Cemetery.

I know, TMI...ask about the weather and you get a gravestone lecture...

M.

[wellfleet]

Mid sixties and gorgeous, after months of damp cool. I'll take it!

[magnemite]

Bit of rain, cool wind, temp in 50's...

[ab_grp]

Here comes another storm out of the blue! Whee! Maybe it will just threaten and move on.

[ab_grp]

We had a couple dry days around 100 degrees.  Then last night a dust came in with an overnight wind advisory.  This morning we were gently awakened at a nice early hour by egregious thunder.  It's been thundering and lightninging on and off but raining pretty continuously.  I just got some areal flood alerts.  It's typically so dry here that rain coming down in big barrels is I guess what my spouse refers to as a "toad strangler" storm (anyone heard of that?!).  Literally, the toads or frogs or whomever have to come out of the ground, and then they start moaning really loudly.  It's quite a treat.

[Ruralguy]

Wet and unusually so for what would normally be summer by this point (unofficially). I was getting used to the idea that there was no such thing as a summer rainy around here.

[mamselle]

Cool, pleasant, sunshiny!

Yea!

M.

[Juvenal]

Drippy, cool.

                           Afternoon^{(nap weather)}

                                                                                       Hey, some of us are retired.  And it's summer break, anyway.

[wellfleet]

Giant heat wave here--we hit 90 today and yesterday, which basically never happens. Luckily, it's not humid and it still cools down at night. I hope we'll be back to normal (60s) soon.

[hungry_ghost]

Sunny and calm. Not the kind of weather that makes me want to stay indoors and write like I need to be doing.

[polly_mer]

                           Afternoon^{(nap weather)}

Did you get a nap?  I'm looking forward to having good nap weather on Friday.

[Juvenal]

                           Afternoon^{(nap weather)}

Did you get a nap?  I'm looking forward to having good nap weather on Friday.

Yes.  And another today, although it was a "morning nap," needed because a) slept poorly, anticipating need to b) get to the pool at 6 a.m. opening and c) fatigue post-swim.  Astonishing how boring swimming is.  And the chlorine reek that lingers for hours...

[the_geneticist]

It's 105 here.  In the shade.

[polly_mer]

I can hear the thunderstorm rolling in.  I'm hoping it will be a nice stormy night.