For dinner last night, we enjoyed the fruits of my father's enormous garden--strawberries and asparagus--which I transformed into a rainy-night soup and a simple bowl of berries topped with creme fraiche. His garden, visually, looks almost exactly like the Jersey market gardens he grew up tending, with everything perfectly square and straight and tilled; whereas mine zigzags among rocks and curves, making the best of gravel, hills, and tight corners. Clearly I came of age gardening on unforgiving New England soil, whereas he, somehow, has managed to make New England look like Mid-Atlantic breadbasket.

Yesterday I finished two small editorial projects, so this morning I have time to focus on Frost Place doings. It's supposed to rain off and on all day, which will keep me happily housebound: the garden enjoyed a good long downpour last night, and we could use three more days of that weather, but certainly I'm grateful for whatever we get.

At 6 a.m. on a Tuesday in mid-June, in the third decade of the century, the little northern city by the sea is draped with fog, and the Norway maples, solemn as cathedrals, tower over shimmer-patches of roses, the plastic playsets of toddlers, the bikes left out in the rain. The narrow streets are crowded with silent construction equipment; gulls screech and wheel over the invisible bay; and here at the Alcott House a French press stands half-full on the white kitchen counter, a cat sleeps on a yellow chair, thick humid air strains through the open screen door . . .