One thing has become clear: the groundhog does not care for onions. So yesterday I finally gave up on my mutilated cabbage crop and filled that area with transplanted leeks. If I get nothing else from this garden, I will at least have a nice fall crop. As you can see from the photo, even with an extra bed, I still did not have room for all of the beauties, so I thinned them out and stuck them in water till I could get around to cleaning them up for the refrigerator. As it turns out, they make a striking if odd bouquet, with their wild hair streaming all over the counter.

My new big poem, "The First of July," is out at Vox Populi this morning. Some of you, who were in the Writing Intensive with me, may have seen an early version of the piece, but among other many changes I radically edited the middle section so that it now has a very different pivot.

Turns out that my dear friend and mentor, Baron Wormser, is also a featured writer today at VP. You should read his essay "Ghosts."

Update: there's an error in my posted poem that I hope will be corrected by the time you read it. The final section, "9 p.m.," was missing on the initial posting, so check back for it if it's still not there.

And now fixed!