Paul is driving up from NYC this morning with a friend, and I am making a chocolate layer cake for them, because why not? This will be P's first return to Portland since last summer, when he broke free from our quarantine nest, and he is eager to see his cat and pick up his canoe gear and show his friend the local sights, and also will be pleased to eat a good homemade cake.

So the house will be enveloped in its old-fashioned uproar for a few days, and I am looking forward to the ruckus, though I am also, for the moment, enjoying this pleasant early-morning quiet. There's a new bouquet of tulips on the living-room table, a fresh bunch of parsley in a glass on the kitchen counter, a wooden platter of pears and avocados in the dining room. The houseplants are glowing in the corners, the floors are scratched but clean, the shabby furniture is what it is and can be no better.

Today, when not working on my cake, I'll be reading the Aeneid, fiddling with some poem drafts, going for a walk, making up the guest bed, missing my garden a little. I can feel myself beginning to get ready for spring. I eye the beds through the window and wonder how the bulbs I planted a few months ago are doing, wonder how soon the soil will soften. We've got at least a month to go before I can expect to see a snowdrop, two or more before I can start yanking out kale stalks and consider planting radishes. But the gardening ichor is fizzing gently in my veins.

I have to be content with store-bought tulips and parsley and pears, and for now they really are good enough. It is restful, midwinter, to contemplate a bloom, a flat green leaf, a heap of red-blushed fruit. Every day Tom goes to work in one mansion or other, and every day he comes home to this little half-fixed-up house and its low-rent comforts. But I love them, and him, and he seems glad to see me too, and we are both looking forward to that chocolate cake.