Today's temperature is supposed to approach 90 degrees. Why, all of a sudden, is Maine getting this heat? Apples are ripening, trees are turning, the light is shifting, and the weather feels like Philadelphia's. Ah, well: it's a last chance to wear my summer dresses and eat coconut popsicles three times a day.

This weekend I will be arranging vegetables at the Harmony Fair; next weekend I will be teaching on Star Island in New Hampshire; the following weekend my band plays at Pat's Pizza's Oktoberfest night in Dover-Foxcroft; and then I'll be heading to New York to read at the Verdi Square Festival of the Arts. That's a funny list of obligations, isn't it? In the meantime, I'll be editing and driving to soccer practice. You know: I haven't canned one single thing this summer . . . not a pickle, not a jar of jam. I have frozen a number of raspberries and a few green beans. I hope I'll eventually be doing tomatoes, but it's conceivable that I won't. And if I don't, this will be the first time in decades that I haven't loaded those basement shelves with winter produce. My life appears to be changing, incrementally but inexorably. I have become the kind of woman who might not can tomatoes. I'm not sure how I feel about this.