Sunflowers and zinnias blooming along the sidewalk: I'm really pleased with my high-summer flowers this year. And the vegetables are coming along too. Yesterday afternoon I picked a bushel of chard and another of collards, cooked them down, and froze them. Today I may freeze some peppers. But then again I may not, because Tom is planning to install the countertop grand finale--the long piece surrounding the sink--and that will involve detaching the kitchen faucet and otherwise disrupting all food activity. It's an exciting moment, after three years of plywood.

The weather continues its torrid ways. I've got to clean bathrooms today, and grocery-shop, and listen to a baseball game, and hang towels on the line, and water the garden; and I ought to mow grass, if I can bear the heat. I'm rereading A. S. Byatt's "The Story of the Eldest Princess," and I'm thinking about Blake's innocence poems, and the strange urge to create fairy tales, and the dangers of storytelling--for teller and listener. As Byatt wrote, "I have always been worried about being the eldest of three sisters."