Paul and I did manage to get to the nursery and find the plants I wanted. So now the new front flower bed is anchored with euphorbia and sedum, and spreading white impatiens dot the beds along the shady back fences. I love the look of a phosphorescent white flower on a hot shadowy evening.

Before dinner we sat in the cool of the maples, and we drank rose, and Paul talked about set design and video games and dragons and the cat, and I looked at the ostrich ferns I'd found abandoned along the sidewalk ten days ago, which are now unfurling fiddleheads in my garden, and Tom blinked groggily from his nap. And then we all stopped what we were doing and marveled "What Eden is this?" because all of us are still amazed that it's actually possible to sit outside in the evening and not be consumed by blackflies and mosquitoes.

Yesterday was hot and today will be hotter. Already, at 5 a.m., it's 63 degrees outside. I ought to dig out the fans this morning, and also my box of summer of clothes, and I need to figure out how I'm going to make something-or-other for dinner while also keeping track of what's going on at the Maine Literary Awards zoom fest. It might be Tuna Melts with a Big Salad night.

I'm still feeling so overwhelmed by work: scads of editing and reading, and my nervousness about the Frost Place conference is increasing. I know I'll get the desk work done, and that the conference will be fine. But still: I'm both responsible for everything and seat-of-the-pants ignorant . . . which is, I guess, exactly the sensation the teachers at the conference have been enduring since March.