Summer is waning. This makes me so sad. Every year in September, when the pool water starts to cool and the odd, heirloom plant I don't know the name of starts to bloom, I get sad and a little panicky. I start to realize I haven't enjoyed the outdoors and more specifically, the pool, enough. I haven't taken the time to just float around on the lounge chair float and read. I haven't reclined on the metal lounge chair by the pool and read enough. Here in Alabama, we have another month we can still swim, two if we turn the pool heater on. I'm going to try to make the most of it.

I thought I was ready for fall, but that was when the outside thermometer read 110°. Now that it's a more bearable 90°-95° with cooler nights, I've changed my mind. As far as I'm concerned, the seasons could be summer, summer, summer, Christmas. Don't get me wrong. I do love spring and fall and all their holidays, but I'd like one good snow for about a week in winter then I'm ready for another season. We rarely get a good snow. We get excited over snow flurries. I think I'd be happy in south Florida. Maybe. But I would miss my shade trees. There aren't enough of them there.

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I'm trying to decide if I want this book, For the Love of Old, by Mary Randolph Carter. It looks like a good one and for the most part has great reviews, but the very first review scares me. She says, "I wanted to see clear, colourful pictures of rooms glorying in sagging wing chairs and balloon shades that have seen better days." Well, I think that's what I want to see, too! Do any of you have this book? Should I get it?

I have Mary Randolph Carter's bumper sticker that says I Brake For Junk. I'm holding onto it until I get a junking truck that's all mine. Her website, Carter's American Junk doesn't seem to have been updated in a year. Anyone know what's going on?

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Remember, tomorrow is the day a year's subscription to Mary Engelbreit's Home Companion is $9.89 at Best Deal Magazines!