The heat seems to have broken, finally. As illustration of the change: Last night I made cold soba noodles with dipping sauce. Tonight I'll serve cannellini beans and garlic soup. Now, if we can only get some rain--the cucumber is loaded with blossoms; okra are beginning to flower; tomatoes and peppers are swelling. A warm wet night would work magic.

In the meantime, I am harvesting kale and chard. Bouquets of lavender and mint are drying in the back room. Sunflowers and zinnias are blooming wildly. I'm copyediting a novel and reading about the daily lives of seventeenth-century New England women and thinking about the poems of William Blake. I wish I were writing.

Slowly, slowly, the days fly by so quickly. I feel as if I can barely keep up with nothing. How much time am I wasting on not being thin or beautiful? on watching the mountain? on rereading the signs? What is the destiny of plainsong? of a cough in the night? Who is more ambitious than silence?