Evening light in the kitchen, after a long day outside.

I planted dahlias, beans, chard, and fennel. I bought sage and tarragon seedlings as well as a gorgeous yellow baptisia. I set tomato stakes, and mowed grass, and deadheaded blooms, and filled the hummingbird feeder, so this morning all I'll need to do is run the trimmer and I'll be caught up outside.

But first: bread baking.

I've got to cram my chores into the morning because I'll be teaching all afternoon. Plus, tomorrow the terrible street construction starts in earnest, and working outside will be unpleasant. I am trying not to be grouchy that roadwork is messing with my very favorite season in the garden. Functional water lines are important. I keep reminding myself of that.

I've started rereading Hermione Lee's bio of Virginia Woolf, as well as John Webster's seventeenth-century play The Duchess of Malfi, which I found on the street. I've been working on a poem draft, working on my lecture for next Thursday's event, fretting to the optometrist about my exhausted eyes. Yes, I need a new prescription, and now eye drops too, and maybe special expensive computer glasses which I really don't want to pay for, and I feel as if my eyes are rotting in my head. To think I used to be known for my big blue eyes. Now all I want to do is squinch them shut.