Today I direct your attention to a couple of refreshing essays by Mary. In As Cool as a Colander from the latest issue of our newsletter, The Orphan Scrivener, she recounts the ingenious method she invented to beat the heat while growing up in the inner city of Newcastle, UK. By contrast, in Rural Observations at the Poisoned Pen Press blog, she muses, in part, on a bird she recently saw bathing out here in the countryside.