1. I've started copying out Robert Frost's poem "Home Burial," which is terribly painful to read and so different from Wordsworth's The Prelude (which I'm also continuing to copy) that I've almost stopped being able to hear either one as poetry. I'm not sure this is a good thing, but I'll persevere.

2. Yesterday, as he was reading a locally produced, contribute-your-own-kitchen-specialty cookbook, Tom came across what is, as of today, my vote for Most Unappetizing Recipe. Here's how it goes. First, you mix together 1 bottle of low-fat Russian dressing, 1 jar of apricot preserves, and 1 packet of dried onion-soup mix. Then you pour this over some raw boneless chicken breasts. Then you bake the mess for half an hour. So simple. So horrible. And I say this as a person with a sturdy background in Jell-O/cottage cheese/Cool Whip potlucks.

What we'll be having for supper is summer vegetable soup and new bread. Sometimes I forget to be happy about such meals.

So now off I'm off to make that bread, to feed hens, to lament the passage of time while wishing that my single orange tomato would hurry up and turn red. The daily round, the daily round.