Early this morning, just as it was starting to get light, an owl serenaded me from the pine tree across the street. It is the first full day of fall, and the owl's song was a sad and almost silly one:"Hoot de hoot hoot hoot" over and over. Made me smile but also reminded me of my mother's saying, "If you hear an owl hoot three nights in a row, someone will die." That was Bucky - she wasn't scaring us, she was just giving us her facts of life.

This summer was kind of like that, good and bad. Good in that no one I know, not Timmy, not me, not even the cat had one tick on them. The bad was there were herds of slugs, bad guys coming into town, eating everything, all the beans, all my marigolds, everywhere you looked gooey, disgusting slugs. The rain was good in that we never had to water the garden once. Bad in that all the rain killed most of the garden. Good in that even though there was a recession, business at the Bird's Nest has been busier than in past years. Bad, so busy my knees are killing me, no time to have fun and sheets to be hung up on the line everyday and bed making a back breaking chore. The woman who runs a B&B in Wellfleet said it best: "we are victims of our own success." Our guests this summer also have been the Good, the Bad and the Ugly with more cancellations and "no shows" than in all of the other years. The ones who make the biggest messes write the best things about us in the guest book. Good and Bad everywhere you look. Today we had a cancellation for this Saturday. Bad, because that is a loss of anywhere from $60 to over $100. Good in that now I can do a Street Painting this weekend because we have no guests coming. I guess it all equals out.