Two tulips in medicine bottles lean forward to converse with a glass swan and a stone head. Their hues are so delicate and complex--pale, pale rose, lightly streaked with yellow and green. I thought nothing could be more beautiful than daffodils on the mantlepiece, but I was wrong.

Yesterday the three of us drove out to Kettle Cove in Cape Elizabeth, hoping to glimpse seabirds. This is a lovely spot of coast, where the open North Atlantic meets Casco Bay, and it attracts both en route birds and over-winterers. It was our lucky day: loons and eiders were bobbing in the lively tide-current, and we saw a charming flock of brants running in and out of the waves along the beach edge. Brants spend the winter on the coast but will head to the Arctic to breed, so we were very fortunate to catch sight of them this late in the season. (Above is a photo of a female eider, a plain brown partner to her extravagant skunk-colored mate. For some reason I forgot to take pictures of the brants.)

The seabirds in Maine are so wonderful and various, and I knew almost nothing about them before I moved to Portland.

As you might have gathered, what with so much jaunting I did zero housework, and thus I have burdened my Monday with too many chores. I might try to convince Paul to vacuum, now that he's unemployed, though he's already promised to cut and bag brush while I lurch through my daily batch of editing. But stuff will get done somehow; and I did place a couple of poems, so that's good; and the brant sighting was a treat; and the weather is getting ready to warm up; and tomorrow I receive my second vax, which spell-check insists should be spelled "fax," which leads me to strange speculations about alternative history; and I mail-ordered a new polka-dotted dress and it actually looks decent on me and it didn't cost the earth; and I'm surprised to report that, thanks to my persistent exercise-class attendance, I seem to have actually developed a few toned muscles to accompany my thickening gray hairs.

Which is to say: my goal is to not be crabby today.