I am not, it must be said, a big fan of heat and humidity, and summer's attendant plagues of mosquitoes, other biting flies, and stinging wasps don't exactly put me in the direction of solstice partisanship. Still, I try to keep my whining to myself and focus on the positives, which are abundant and often outweigh the groaners. Even so, I'm inclined, as the Dog Days settle in, seemingly forever, to look for signs of impending relief. Today I found it on a weary walk to the millpond. On the side of the road, in a patch of mostly green Poison Ivy, there was one leaf that had already made the transition through the red stage to the yellow finale. It's way too early to be thinking about early autumns, but in that spent leaf was a species of, well, hope and impending change. I, for one, hope I'm not becoming delusional... or desperate.