It is a truly great year for apples, at least at our Maine farm. Every apple tree...and we have seven...is weighed down with fruit ripening. I was looking ahead to making applesauce...LOTS of applesauce...but in a way dreading the hard work of it...until a visiting friend recalled her mother using a gizmo called a Squeezo-strainer for that purpose. "Probably obsolete," my friend. "It was forty years ago." But we googled Squeezo-strainer...and now I have one; and if my friend's memory os correct, I'm going to be churning out applesauce practically effortlessly, as soon as the apples are ripe enough.

In the meantime my grandsons' younger golden retriever, Dash, is chasing apples as if they were balls (and when he's bored, he eats them). (His older half-sister, Tillie, has no interest; nor does my dog, Alfie)

And here is a very majestic dog, already in the car for his leavetaking this morning after a weekend visit. This is Paddington Bear, at least his head, with the other 160 pounds not visible. It is not often one has a RUG to visit. He was lying on the floor last night when a newly-arrived dinner guest walked past and jumped when the Newfie blinked. "It's ALIVE!" she said, startled, having thought it really WAS a rug.

Alfie was disappointed that Bear doesn't PLAY, just lies around.

I returned on Thursday from four days in Milwaukee working there with the theater people on the stage adaptation of "Gossamer" that I've written. Three times the actors read it aloud, while we all listened for weak moments, confusing dialogue, timing problems. Collaboration..and theater is certianly that...is very different from the solitary work of writing, and great fun for a change.

Now, after a lot of weekend company, I am alone for the week, with a lot of leftovers to eat and a lot of mail to answer.