The waxing moon is framed both by my open sliding-glass door and by the dancing silhouettes of leafy tree branches. It is also partially obscured by encroaching overcast. It drew me outside for a few minutes, just so I could more fully experience this unusually cool and overcast July night. I'm back inside now, and I've paused in my reading to write for a few moments. Inspiration to write still hasn't been hitting me as often as I'd like, so I'm taking advantage of my current desire to type before it vanishes into the graveyard of unrealized intentions.

Summer camp has been in full swing for weeks, and the late Spring rains have made a big difference in the presence of local flora and fauna. The grasses and thistles are towering and thick, and I've found a greater variety of small animals than usual. The Summer temperatures have been relatively mild as well and, with the exception of a few hot days, one might think it was still Spring.

I've rented a storage space and I've been busy filling it with belongings that have been gathering webs and dust in my mom's garage. I've also been collecting and sorting my mom's stuff, deciding what to put in storage, what to give away, and what to simply dispose of. Her postage stamp collection is now gone, and several other items have been spoken for. Much remains. I got the bright idea to raffle off some of the stuff at our weekly Summer Camp raffle. So far, I've donated some ridiculously hard jigsaw puzzles and a framed self-portrait I drew in college. The self-portrait was raffled off, but returned because the parents of the camper thought it was "creepy", although I've heard that they now want it back. Strange. Perhaps our raffle needs some explanation: the raffle is a spectacle in which humorous crap, mostly of the flea market and garage sale variety, is bequeathed to young children. It is always highly entertaining and just the sort of place where things like self-portraits and impossible puzzles can be given away for a laugh. The puzzles are actually of good quality, and the humor in this case has to do with their extreme difficulty. For instance, one puzzle, entitled "Green Fog" has pieces which are all exactly the same shade of green. Another has the same image printed on both sides of the puzzle pieces, with one side being rotated 90 degrees. I like to think that my mom would have appreciated the humor of it all.

This week also brought with it the exciting discovery of a couple of creatures I hadn't seen around camp before. The first was a small, tan Praying Mantis in the meadow. It blended in perfectly with the dry grass, and I only saw it because it made the mistake of moving. The second was a Sharp-Tailed Snake, which I found curled up under a section of tree trunk near the front lawn. This was exciting to me because it's the last local snake species I had yet to encounter in the wild. Now I can cross it off my list. The snake itself was much less excited, and indicated its displeasure at being discovered by pooping on me.