Six-fifteen on a Sunday morning, and it's already 65 degrees. We're in for our first scorcher today, and to celebrate we've decided to go into town in our summer clothes and eat oysters and poutine. This will be our first restaurant outing--inside or out--for more than a year, and we're excited.

As hoped, I spent yesterday outside: writing for a while in the morning; then planting sweet woodruff in shady backyard corners, transplanting a sad-looking peony from a cramped, overshadowed spot in the Hill Country to a freer place along the back fence; re-sowing sunflower seeds, beans, and nasturtiums that hadn't sprouted the first time (sigh); arguing with the insects and squirrels that are damaging my various crops; and watering watering watering.

I've been working on a poem draft that was originally an unfinished essay about the history of laundry--a piece that's been kicking around for a while, and that I like, but haven't been able to transform into a finished entity. For while I've been thinking I should recast it in verse, and that's what I've been trying to do this week. Now that I can sit outside instead of trying to unpack sentences in the midst of the household swirl, I'm actually making a bit of progress. Who knows if it will amount to anything? Still, it's a good revision exercise, no matter what.