Halfway down the Danube

Sure is quiet

Claudia and the boys are in Germany, so I'm alone in the house.

It's quiet.

Days are long and bright and hot; I spend most of them in my office, which is air-conditioned. When I come home, the house is cool and dark inside. In the evening, odd gusts of wind rattle the tin rood and throw dust at the windows. Nights are clear and the summer stars seem low and close.

Here's a poetic image you must have seen a hundred times: "The fruit hangs heavy on the vine". Well, our house has an arbor in the front, with grape vines twined around it. Now they're full of grapes, still green and hard but getting bigger every day. I was coming in the door one day and I realized I had to dodge around these dangling vines. They were trailing down in loops from the arbor, pulled down a little lower every day by the weight of the grapes. The fruit is hanging heavy on the vine. And it's going to get heavier yet.