Yesterday, before dinner, I harvested broccoli, okra, baby beets, marigolds, basil, mint, and parsley. The garden is shifting into high-summer gear: green tomatoes fattening; eggplant and peppers nearly ready to cut; pale carrots thrusting their sharp tips downward. No sign of the groundhog this week. I might have annoyed her out of the neighborhood, or a burrow full of rainwater did.

Unfortunately, the rain is becoming a little nerve-racking. Tonight and tomorrow the remnants of Elsa are forecast to swing up the Atlantic coast and dump several inches of water on us, so now we're under a flash-flood watch . . . of course on the day that Paul is supposed to fly home. Ugh.

Well, I got pretty good at not worrying while the boys were hiking through bear-laden mountains, so I guess I can continue to keep calm about airplanes in foul weather.

Today will be another intense editing day: hours at my desk, trying hard to finish marking up this novel by Friday afternoon. The manuscript is long and dense, and I don't know if I'll be able to do it. But I've got to try.

In the meantime, rain is falling lightly. The dawn light is dim and grey, and I also am feeling dim and grey . . . which is not a complaint, just a sense of receding into shadow.