Far across the broad Atlantic where the storms do rage severe

At the end of a difficult month, after a morning that started with the unbeatable back-to-back combination of MRI and dentist's appointment, derspatchel took me to Georges Island for the sea. I brought Doppel-Abbie. He brought Garak (on vacation). There are photographs of both, but I'll have to wait until Rob sends the Picasa link over to post them. We wandered around Fort Warren in the warm afternoon, brick barrel-vaulting and stairs spiraling down into granite, old artillery sites half-filled with rain like abandoned quarries; we stayed away from the nests of barn swallows, including the one with three fledged chicks loudly squeaking and the one we knew had to exist because the mother dive-bombed me out of a darkened doorway; and we sat for an hour on the seawall to the southeast of the island and watched the tide come in, over broken granite blocks and seaweed that lifted and stirred in the glass-swirl, the deep sun-dusted bottle-green of the sea. The air smelled of salt and summer grass, haying. Huge clouds stacked up like a blue-filtered photograph everywhere we turned in the sky. The ferry guide told the same ghost story both ways. We had dinner at Durgin-Park afterward, home of the best molasses Indian pudding.

At least July ended well. We worked for it.