It continued raining this morning, and the winds picked up. The car choked out on the way to the train station, so we all stayed home while Mike replaced the battery and changed the oil. Noah and Maxim went to the Maynard Public Library and played with Mark, the world's greatest children's librarian, while Marcela looked for new books and videos. It started to warm up and grow humid in the afternoon and everyone got grumpy. Noah took a nap early. Maxim went to sleep later and woke up earlier. When Catherine got off the school bus (she started third grade yesterday), she stopped in and visited with Maxim. They drew and painted and then learned a dance, which they showed us all. After Dawn picked up Catherine and I put out six weeks of recycling, we stood in the backyard and enjoyed the cooling wind rushing through the trees. All of the rain has soaked the recently stripped windows so they can not be sanded until at least Friday. But taking out all of the recycling made a lot more space in the basement. Marcela swept the floor into a pile and I cleaned up my tool bench and swept up the pile of dirt from the floor. Maxim and Catherine had played in the yard, but most of the things got moved by me because otherwise they leave footprints in the grass. You can see one that got started by the slide, it is the light oval you can see in the lower left corner of the picture of the yard. Out in the front of our yard all three sunflowers have bloomed. The original bloomer, the big one in this shot, hangs face to the ground. The other two still look east into the morning sun. I pulled the horseweed that had grown to over six feet tall, leaving just the sunflowers to conceal the fire hydrant. You can see the long line of recycling in this photograph, the flowers on the squash plant that just won't squash, and the long row of houses just like ours lining Sudbury Street.