Scattered showers were forecast for yesterday evening, but what we got was hours of steady, heavy, hot rain. Now the air is waterlogged, and all the wood surfaces feel like flypaper. Paperback covers are curling, my feet are sticking to my sandals, and cloud smothers the rooftops. Amid all of this dankness, the temperature is supposed to climb to the high 80s. It will be a miserable day to do any kind of work at all.

Still, I'm not sorry about the rain. Late in the day, I pulled the last of my radishes, a lingering kohlrabi, some bolted lettuce, and most of the beets, and then sowed a few more rows of fall greens: lettuce, arugula, rapini. Today I'll grate up some of that harvest and make a slaw. I'll venture out into the hot world and buy a mackerel or crabs or smoked whitefish or whatever looks irresistible at the fish market. I might try to acquire some cold rosé.

I've got a manuscript to edit today, but I finished my curriculum planning for next week's environmental writing seminar. So maybe, on this sweltering day, I'll have a chance to restart my poem-writing excitement. Try to picture me sitting on the couch next to a fan and a giant sweating glass of ice tea, and imagine I'm reading and writing and reading and writing. If we all pretend hard enough, maybe it will come true.