Dream House

This is one of the images I have been working on for my dream illustration. I want to add one of the trees I photographed last week into this picture. The house used to be black and now it was white. In my dream, I was explaining to my friend how the house had changed and it reverted back to the way it was while I was talking.

Rain

We had another heat wave. I spent the early part of the week working on one of my dream images. I am pasting in more Japanese paper, pulling the fibers so they spread like tendrils across the image. It is tricky because it is easy to do too much and ruin the picture. I put it aside. After hitting 100 degrees on Wednesday, the heat wave broke with a classic violent thunderstorm, including hail. The next few days were rainy and the temperature dropped down to the 60's.

On Friday, I went out during a break in the rain to find some pine trees. They grew in front of my house for years but have since been cut down. I went to the Ross Pinetum in Central Park. Everything was green and cool.

Admittedly, the trees at the pinetum are a bit fancier than the ones that grew outside my childhood home. But I found a couple that would work.

Then the rain came back. I though I could wait it out, but it came down stronger.

When I finally came out of the park, I was pretty sodden in spite of an umbrella. The weather continues to change; it was heartbreaking beautiful this weekend with thunderstorms on the way for tomorrow. I suppose it is better than endless heat and humidity.

Summer

It seems hardly right to complain about the heat in New York. People have had it so much worse elsewhere; Washington with their Derecho and blackouts, St. Louis with days of 100 degree weather, Chicago with their gun attacks. Still it has been hot here as well. It was strange, considering the sudden increase in violence over the weekend (we beat Chicago, hurrah), but it seemed to me as if people were going out of their way not to be crazy from the heat.

Lots of fire hydrants had sprinkler caps. I noticed that the cars would often drive slowly through the water as if to cool down.

The hydrants seem to cool the whole street off, 

sending small temporary streams down the block.

The heat wave has broken, but it is still hot, just not "90 plus turn on the hydrants" hot. This summer might be long.