My cabbage plants sprawl over the garden paths like oversized boys on a couch. The sweetpeas are starting to bloom in every shade of Necco wafer (except that dusty gray-black one); a patch of deep-pink sweet Williams has appeared in the hedgerow; scarlet runners are climbing all over the sagging front deck (sagging from where the moose ran into it a few years ago); and unfortunately, Japanese beetles continue to find all other Japanese beetles irresistibly sexy.

It is high summer in Maine. Both boys are gainfully employed at camp, and Tom and I are beginning a fourteen-day twentieth-anniversary celebration of our honeymoon. Today, for instance, I will celebrate by washing only one load of laundry instead of three. I spent a few wandering hours yesterday afternoon writing about Milton . . . "wandering" in that I would compose a sentence, wander off to eat a popsicle, come back, erase the sentence, wander off to pick some sweetpeas, come back, write a paragraph, wander off to drink ice tea. . . . You get the idea. This is my favorite way to write, but it requires an empty house. Otherwise, I get self-conscious about how lazy and unconcentrated I look.

Today, however, I have to edit. I also have to mow grass again at 8 a.m. This lawn of mine has entirely too much grass.