The sun is still among the missing. Posters have been put up asking people to keep an eye out in case it should appear. The misty rain comes and goes. Gracie has left wet paw prints all over the kitchen floor. The cats are sleeping; of course, they are.

It is getting closer and closer to the end of deck time. Soon all the furniture will be covered and all the flower pots emptied. It makes me sad to know that Saturday night movies are over, they’ll no more reading outside and no more sitting by candlelight at night listening to the wonderful sounds of summer. The leaves are slowly turning, but the deck has debris from the rain: sticks, leaves and acorns. It already looks deserted.

English grammar has clear rules. Like math or even music, there is a right answer or a right tune. People hop all over singers out of tune. They complain about the stupidity of cashiers who need cash registers to tell them the amount of change because they can’t figure it out themselves. Correcting English, though, isn’t acceptable. The reason for this I’m told is communication. It is people understanding each other no matter how they say it. I accept that popular usage has changed a few of the rules like the one where hopefully used to be an adverb, but objects of prepositions haven’t changed at all. On the news the other night I heard the reporter say something like the witness told he and I. That mistake was okayed by the writer, the editor and the reporter who probably shouldn’t be blamed as she just read the news handed to her. Is it too much to ask that we speak our mother tongue correctly? Obviously it is, but don’t you dare sing out of tune or you’ll be excoriated in the newspapers and, worst of all, in social media.