I planted calendula often in the Harmony garden, but this is the first year I've put it into the Portland one. Though the flowers are easy enough to grow by seed, I impulsively bought a flat of seedlings around the time when my father got sick and I was trying to quickly fill beds before I left for Vermont for untold weeks. Generally I grow calendula as a salad flower, but this time I was focused on the sidewalk bed, where I plant annuals to create a summer hedge, ones that stand up to sidewalk dirt and dogs. Of course, road construction upended my plans, and soon I had to dig up the little plants and heel them in elsewhere for weeks, and then replant them in the so-called loam that the guys used to fill the holes.

But the calendula has weathered magnificently. It is a plain little plant: fat buttons of color--orange, yellow, or cream--with thick bright foliage and a bustling eagerness to grow. I'm starting to think of it as my mascot flower: simple, happy, and sweet. Not that I am reliably any of those things myself, but I can dream.

Yesterday I did manage to get the housework done, so that task is comfortably behind me for a week. I am now surrounded by clean floors and clean bathrooms, and I have an unplanned day ahead. My new poem is six pages long, and I think it is mostly finished, though no doubt I'll be tinkering with it all day long, and tinkering with the garden all day long, weeding and staking and pruning one or the other.

This long weekend has been such a gift.