Drunk on spring, I spent most of yesterday in the garden. One of my tasks was to set the tomato stakes you see here. In real life, I won't plant tomatoes till Memorial Day; but now that I've got the bed laid out, I can sow short-season greens between the stakes that I'll harvest before tomato time. I'm a big proponent of succession planting, which allows me to take advantage of seasonal changes to reuse the same beds for multiple crops (and is a huge advantage in weed control). Still, this was the first time I'd thought of planting directly in the future tomato patch. Sometimes I'm slow.

My current biggest animal problem is my own cat, who can't resist digging up freshly prepared beds. So the boxes are protected with this elaborate grid (the panels off an old compost bin), balanced on sticks and rocks to avoid crushing the sprouts. If you squint, you might see a line of radish seedlings. Spinach and bunching onions are also poking through, but they're too small for the camera. Behind them is pea fence. Between them, bare ground, reserved for beans, and an invisible planted row of kohlrabi and fennel.

And, as photographic variety, here are two loaves of bread--a whole-wheat sandwich recipe, with a handful of teff seeds mixed in for texture and nutrition. Teff is the grain used in the fermented Ethiopian bread injera. It's tiny, the size of poppyseeds, and adds a little grit to a light loaf.

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We're all back to work today. I've got a stack of new editing, a stack of correspondence. Paul will have class all day. Tom is making breakfast, packing his lunch. I dreamed last night about a poet acquaintance who had just purchased a house in the shape of a pirate ship. It was an enjoyable dream, much better than the usual ones I've been having, and I feel more or less rested and calm this morning. I'm still reading Roth's Deception, still reading my friend's novel manuscript--in both cases slowly picking my way through sentences; glad to be just a reader, not an editor or an instructor or an opinionator.

I do get tired of being instructed by other writers: told how to look/react/feel . . . about the world, about literature, about their own work. As a teacher and editor myself, I have to assume students and other writers feel the same way about me. It's a conundrum--how do we share our perceptions without bossing other people into accepting them? Sometimes there's no choice: academic copyediting is built around brisk decision making. But that teacher's manual kind of bossiness: when is it ever necessary?