Garlic, tulip, hyacinth, and crocus shoots are poking through the rimed earth. The shrubs I planted last fall--blueberries, hydrangea--are greening. The snow is melting rapidly from the bed of iris and lilies I laid out along the driveway. In the barren backyard mud season has arrived, and I watched a flicker scream wick-wick-wick-wick from the tip of a Norway maple. All day long gusts whipped leaves into eddies. I raked out flowerbeds wearing a winter hat and gloves. Early spring in Maine is a long drink of ice water.

Inside, Tom has almost finished putting up the kitchen trim. It's beautiful, even in its unpainted, uncaulked, scatter-spackled state. He's carefully cut and fit the pieces to replicate the original 1940s trim in the other rooms. This is such a funny little house: a workingman's cape that is both a throwback to its Puritan forebears and a mid-twentieth-century miniature. Watch any noir movie and you'll see a version of our pebble-glass bathroom door, maybe in the detective's office or in the jewelry store before the heist. It's strangely timeless, strangely modern.

It was a good day yesterday. We gossiped with both of our boys on the phone. I sewed and read poems and worked in the garden, and then in the evening lit a fire in the stove, reheated minestrone, hugged the cat. Happiness is so small, so easy to step on.