The past two days I've left the novel and returned to a big legal editing project which isn't due until the fall. Our editor wants to see a synopsis of the book (already sent -- 5,000 words worth) and the first five chapters (now being proofread by Mary) just in case. That suits me because I have a hard time motivating myself to write anything unless I'm pretty certain will be read -- which in regards to fiction means accepted for publication. So long as our editor likes the basic concept, I have no doubt we can manage the writing part with sufficient technical proficiency, so I can then proceed happily. But until we hear the editorial "On on!" I prefer to be doing work I've contracted to do rather than, possibly, racing further down a dead end.

Yesterday I also mowed the lawn. Notably, the grass was not very long and had only required two mowings all of May, an indication of the wonderfully cool weather we enjoyed last month. I also began to fill a few holes in the front yard which have been gradually growing larger. I had refrained from dealing with the biggest one a couple years ago when a woodchuck was in residence but the undisturbed leaves covering the entrance show that the burrow has been abandoned. I harvested some stones from the back yard for fill , thus killing two birds with one...uh...stone. No matter how many rocks I remove there are always more. I'm happily allowing moss to overtake the far back so I don't have to even try to mow there. I'll add a little dirt now and then and after the areas are done subsiding, sometime in the fall, I'll sow some grass seed.

While gathering the rocks I again noticed what seems to be the remains of a base of an old stone wall cutting through the yard. If you walk out into the woods behind the house you'll find stone walls. That's true all over Pennsylvania. The state is more wooded today than it was a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago when much more of the land was farmed.

I was pleased to wake up this morning with nothing more than a slight bit of tightness in my balky back. Actually, I had more excitement while asleep than while awake since I dreamed Mary and I attended a large formal wedding (or some big social event -- it was all rather vague) and I was inexplicably carrying our cat under my arm the whole time.