Last night for dinner we ate chard fried in olive oil; chard stems baked with butter and Parmesan; new potatoes with parsley, dill, and butter; and a salad of roasted tiny green beans, tiny cucumbers, and tiny yellow tomatoes on regular sized arugula. For dessert we ate a handful of raspberries macerated in maple syrup and spooned over plain thick yogurt. ("All the produce came from my garden," she announced pridefully, but the gods quickly nipped that hubris in the bud by pointing out that her grapes were beginning to rot on the vines and that Japanese beetles were fornicating all over the hops.)

The season of overflow has begun, and today is baby-pea-picking day. I'm imagining them alongside oven-fried chicken, possibly with a few split and roasted green onions. But enough of this food talk. I've started reading a biography of baseball player Stan Musial as well as a novel by Robertson Davies. Stan is from Donora, Pennsylvania, and thus a point of reference for my western Pennsylvania project. Robertson Davies is more of an "I'm in need of a story" choice. Meanwhile, I edit and edit and mow grass and mow grass, weekends be damned. This is an extraordinarily work-filled summer, which I suppose is good since Tom is presently not working on anything except renovating Paul's bedroom. He's renovating it beautifully, though. This is a man who can build a gorgeous writing table out of leftover oak flooring, some pine scraps, and the careful mixing of two kinds of leftover paint. It's far too nice a table for a 13-year-old ne'er-do-well, and perhaps someone should steal it from him.