Our tropical (ok, slight hyperbole) summer continues with moisture from another monsoonal system now moving through Mexico. The tiniest bit of rain here this morning and a softness to the air, humidity without the heat.

It's beginning to feel a lot like summer. (Especially on PCH, but the less said about that nexus of chaos and poor judgement the better.)

Last night, just at dusk, the coyote family emerged. Before it was always mom heading out first and then the pups, clearly disobeying orders, leaving the den and tumbling after. They'd explore for a minute and then vanish, race back to the burrow to await the grownups.

This time, though, it was everyone -- mom and dad and four pups, which is one more than we had seen before.

Mom and the pups waited below:

...while the dad stood at the top of the ridge:

As he took a little stretch:

...someone broke protocol:

And joined him.

I wonder whether their perch here at the edge of development is one of strength or one of weakness. Is it better to control territory deep in the hills, far from cars and dogs and humans? Or, in this time of drought, does proximity to lush landscaping and leaking sprinklers and the moles and voles and bunnies they attract trump peril and become the brass ring?

Hello, summer. Which season are you going to resemble in this year of the dry winter and reverse spring?

Also, Happy Fathers Day! (That's my dad on the right, so very young, both of those guys.)

Are there two spider seasons, one in the fall and one in the spring? Because here in the hills we're suddenly wrapped in spider silk, sticky and stretchy with that audible snap that means you've walked through a web and carried off a long night's work, if not a few mummified meals or (eek) the spider herself.

In other news, the coyote mom who showed up wounded last week was sunning herself here this morning and she looks well.

As June continues to offer up gray mornings and flat light, we here at the coast have taken to a 99-cent solution -- bubble therapy.

Surprisingly effective. Plus, you learn a lot about wind direction.

My coyote education continues here at the cottage, perched at the edge of a wide swath of conservancy land. It's Friday night right at sunset and coyotes from three separate clans head down the hill. They're seemingly ignoring each other but the precise and unvarying distance they maintain says otherwise. And then, just moments after they're gone, a trio of coyote pups pops out from behind a clump of flowers and they literally tumble down the hill.

Too dark to shoot without a tripod so the photos are even fuzzier than the pups. The little guys are skinny and pointy, long legs, big ears, big snouts. They're still working on that whole coordination thing.

Yesterday, the coyote who I think is their mother came home at dawn from hunting and she was wounded. Moving well but her right flank was torn and scraped. Quiet last night, quiet this morning.

Google says coyotes often attack each other, clan-on-clan warfare, particularly when food and water get scarce. It also talks about how, as predators, they are pitiless, though anyone living among them needs no reminder. A hard life to live, a hard life to watch.

The sun is trying its best but so far, advantage marine layer.

It rained. In June. It rained in June in the midst of an epic drought. And while a day of sprinkles doesn't add up to, well, anything at all, I keep thinking about Bill Murray's line at the end of "Groundhog Day" -- different is good.

It took a while to realize those drops falling from the sky were actual rain courtesy of Tropical Storm Blanca and not just misty fog. Hello again, reverse spring.

And then last night, just as the sun set, a rainbow so wide you couldn't catch it all in one frame. It spanned the Pacific, doubled up a few times, lifted from the water to the east, dropped into the waves in the west.

Depending on who was speaking and where their travels have taken them, people said the weather felt like Hawaii, or Baja, or Key West, or the Virgin Islands. The common thread in each conversation? "Oh thank goodness."

The weather reports are talking heat but here at the coast it's all about the fog, thick and low and cold, not that anyone seems to mind much.

Ahhhhhh.

The only difference between the gloom of June's coastal fog and the gray of May is that I don't have to wonder whether it's actually spelled 'grey' after all.

Meanwhile, here's that coyote quartet last night, the (accidental) flash lighting up their eyes, as well as revealing the hidden coyote in the brush on the left of the shot.