Into the annals of strange things that happen when I answer the door, add the man who inquired, "Would you like any free oil?"

Turns out he was replacing a neighbor's heating-oil tank, which was not as empty as he'd been led to believe, so he had some fuel to drain before he could finish the job, and most everyone else close by has natural gas heat, so could he just lug it over in five-gallon cans and pour it into my fill pipe? . . .

Sometimes this place is more like Harmony than you'd expect.

In short, yesterday turned out to be fruitful. Not only did I acquire free heat, but I also put four quarts of chicken stock and four half-pints of pesto into the freezer, listened to the Red Sox break an embarrassing nine-game skid, and even got some actual paying work done.

Today will be another olio: editing a biography, running errands for Tom (e.g., picking up the tile for our kitchen backsplash), processing peppers for the freezer, copying out some Blake poems, taking a yoga class, washing towels, cleaning cured garlic for storage . . .

Here's a lyric by Thomas Wyatt. I give it to you in modern spelling, though I have been enjoying puzzling out "They fly from me that sometime did me seke / With naked fote stalking in my chamber" . . .

They Flee from Me

Sir Thomas Wyatt

They flee from me that sometime did me seek

With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.

I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,

That now are wild and do not remember

That sometime they put themself in danger

To take bread at my hand; and now they range,

Busily seeking with a continual change.

Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise

Twenty times better; but once in special,

In thin array after a pleasant guise,

When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,

And she me caught in her arms long and small;

Therewithall sweetly did me kiss

And softly said, “Dear heart, how like you this?”

It was no dream: I lay broad waking.

But all is turned thorough my gentleness

Into a strange fashion of forsaking;

And I have leave to go of her goodness,

And she also, to use newfangleness.

But since that I so kindly am served

I would fain know what she hath deserved.