So here we are, back to Monday again. Happy March! Happy pouring rain! During yesterday's first foray into the garden, I cut back kale and chard stalks and trimmed various brown perennial detritus. The ground is mostly still frozen, but everywhere under the leaves I found fresh shoots--hyacinths, scylla, crocuses, tulips--and many of the perennials were budding tiny new leaves at their bases. Spring is lying in wait, ready to pounce.

But we still have snow . . . or at least we did before this rainstorm started up. 

What else is new? I sauteed steaks and mushrooms for dinner instead of roasting a chicken, because the chicken wasn't thawed yet. Paul put a spring training baseball game on the radio, and we had the joy of hearing the summer-day voice of our beloved Joe Castiglione calling the balls and strikes. I cleaned bathrooms and went to the grocery store and . . .

Wait a minute, now I'm hearing a bird, a delighted bird, out in the rainy darkness, singing and singing; and I think it's a male cardinal whistling his nesting song: "Cheer, cheer, cheer, cheer!" O, spring!

. . . and I'm happy to mention that the Beltway Poetry Quarterly has decided to take three of my poems, including that long Descartes one I was telling you about yesterday. In addition, the editor invited me to submit essays and such in the future. I'm pleased. It's an excellent journal, and I haven't really had a steady essay venue since George Core retired from the editorship of the Sewanee Review.

Today: I've got to choose something to read at tomorrow night's Bootleg Reading Series event. I'll struggle through my 8 a.m. abs class and scour the kitchen sink and study the poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay. I'll work on some class planning for those upcoming high school sessions I'll be teaching. I'll order a new bicycle tire pump, and I'll finally roast that chicken, and I'll watch the snow melt away.