Fog thick as a fist, and now a whisper of rain begins to fall; it slits the dense air like a shiver, though I doubt we'll get much watering benefit. I expect I'll need to start running the hose again this afternoon, which is a disappointment.

Wednesday morning, on the last day of August. The neighborhood is quiet. Most families seem to be away, a last hurrah before school starts next week. Next door a woman has slowly been moving out of her apartment. Across the street a penned-up cat glowers through an upstairs window.

For me, today will be another giant work day, this one spent slamming through hundreds of footnotes before P arrives tonight. I am making good progress but oy. My brain feels like cheese.

And now the rain is picking up speed, a delightful sound. Maybe I won't have to water tonight after all. A petrichor breath floats in through the humid dark. Raindrops clatter on the new metal shed roof, bounce off the air machine, rattle against windowpanes.

My heart lifts, despite the footnotes.

It's very sticky and warm on this dark morning, and the windows are all open, and the cicadas are creaking away like crazy in every direction. September may be days away, but summer is clinging hard to Maine. 

This afternoon I'll need to make another batch of tomato sauce. I know I'll be picking beans and trying to figure out what to do with them. I don't have time to can, so probably I'll end up giving at least some of them away to the neighbors. Vegetable-eating neighbors without gardens are a real boon during harvest season. 

I'll also be parked at my desk, of course: hacking away at manuscripts, trying to catch up on work before the boy arrives, though apparently he's got zoom meetings and other stuff to do while he's here, which makes me feel somewhat less breathless.

All in all, I'm feeling kind of overwhelmed, though I've got the whole day to myself and I know, rationally, that I'll get done what needs to get done. More, it's the sense that life is billowing at me, like a sheet in a breeze.

It was a crazy work Sunday but much was accomplished. I packed and canned five jars of dill beans, boiled and strained a pot full of tomatoes and peppers into sauce, froze sauce, froze the stray beans that didn't fit into jars, cleaned bathrooms, marinated and roasted lamb, made tabbouleh, read the "East Coker" section of Four Quartets, finished Penelope Fitzgerald's Offshore, mowed grass, grocery-shopped, washed piles of dishes . . . I'm sure I'm forgetting something because the day went on and on like that.

But now I've got my five beautiful jars to admire, the first canning I've done for several years. The beans are so pretty, floating in their seeds and and brine. I arrange them on the shelf; then open the freezer to admire the boxes of sauce, the neat packages of beans and kale and corn and peas; now wander into the basement to gloat over the stack of dry firewood. What I have is homesteader hubris, a common ailment of late summer--the self-congratulatory glory of the winter stockpiler.

Today I'll go back to my editing desk, and I'll finish the housework I couldn't do while T was filling the air with sawdust and shavings, and I'll talk to Teresa about T. S. Eliot, and the day will simmer down into its own version of sauce. On Wednesday the Brooklyn boy will be arriving for a week's cheerful disruption, so I need to pound out the pages while I can.

 I enjoyed yesterday's class: it was fun not to be the teacher, for a change. Today, however, I'll be forging into full-scale housekeeper mode: first, groceries; then bean pickling, sauce making, canning, and freezing; plus I ought to mow grass and run the trimmer and clean the bathrooms.

Tom spent the afternoon noisily planing cedar planks; he also went paint shopping, so I think today he may begin painting stuff, if the wood has dried out enough from Friday's torrent.

I've started rereading Penelope Fitzgerald's novel Offshore, and I'm finishing up my Four Quartet homework for my Monday phone confab with Teresa. I fiddled a bit with a poem draft yesterday morning, though I don't think it's going to become anything worthwhile. Late in the afternoon, I chatted with a woman who stopped by to look at my flowers; she turned out to live up the street and be the widow of a prominent Democratic state politician, so that was interesting. I listened to the Red Sox play good baseball (for a change), and missed a phone call from my son, and made a very satisfying chicken curry overflowing with garden produce--carrots, peppers, tomatoes, chard, cilantro, topped with roasted-potato coins and a tiny garnish of fried okra.

One thing that Ian mentioned in class was the importance of opening ourselves to flow states: of being so absorbed in an activity that we lose sense of time; that is, energetic concentration; being in the zone. But I also like the notion of flowing from one activity to another, a different conception of flow state: brief bursts of extreme concentration shifting into another burst in another realm . . . writing, then picking beans, then writing, then walking to the library, then writing, then washing dishes, then writing, then folding laundry. This is how I work best, when I am engaged in a flow of thought and movement, the tasks of mind and body intersecting not as distractions but as comrades.

Around about 4 p.m., the skies opened, and we were hit with a thunderstorm the likes of which I haven't seen for years. A torrent of rain--the street instantly a whitewater river, branches crashing everywhere, lakes in the garden, and meanwhile Tom was on the highway trying to get home, unable to see a damn thing. Eventually he squeezed onto an exit and into town, to find roads flooded, cars abandoned. It was pretty hair-raising.

We got 2 inches of rain in the space of an hour. At least some of my tender fall crops are flattened, but I haven't yet gone outside to inspect the details of the damage. I daresay most things will bounce back, but lordy.

I guess we're making up for our drought all at once.

This morning I'll reconnoiter the carnage, do some housework, pull things together for Ian's class this afternoon. I froze peppers yesterday, and made enough sauce for dinner, but I've still got bowls of tomatoes ripening on the counter, plus beans to pickle tomorrow. I need to finish my T. S. Eliot homework this weekend, and I still haven't picked up my library book, but I will definitely not have to water the garden. If this paragraph sounds disorganized, that's because I am.

Yesterday's book launch was packed! I was so happy for the young writers, and glad I went, too, as I think it meant a lot to the poet I mentored. Then I bustled home through the construction-filled streets, said a quick hello to Tom and Ruckus (working on the shed trim and not working on the shed trim, respectively), and in a few minutes Betsy and Marita picked me up and we went back into town for our writing salon. It was a good evening, sociable and busy, and other people's drafts were really, really strong, though mine devolved into doggerel. Ah, well; that happens. It was good enough to be writing and listening.

Today, desk work of course, though I am finally able to glimpse an end to this siege. I've got Frost Place stuff to do, and I'm hoping to mow grass in the afternoon, and the beans and the tomatoes are growing crazily. On Saturday I'll be zooming, but on Sunday I might can dilly beans, something I haven't done since I left Harmony. After so many years of service, my poor canning jars sit dusty and empty. It will be fun to start filling them up again.

Really, it's amazing, in this drought summer, how much production I've gotten from the garden. The plants are smaller and frailer than usual, but the fruits are heavy. Probably I'll make tomato sauce this afternoon, and maybe a batch of fresh cucumber pickles. I might work on a poem; I need to spend time with the Four Quartets; I want to ride my bike to the library and fetch the Penelope Fitzgerald novel I ordered.

Apparently, all I do is garden and and cook and toss words into the air. Who knew that could be a life?

5 a.m. Under the streetlight, ropes of fog twist against the blue dark. Cicadas creak but otherwise the neighborhood is still--no cars, no birds, no footsteps.

Small tasks are ticking through my mind . . . sheets to wash and hang on the line, green beans to blanch and freeze, cucumbers to pickle . . . Bowls of tomatoes fill the counter, the garden tumbles into harvest, my thoughts are a litany of take-care, take-care . . . and now, very suddenly, the birds are awake: a pair of jays screeching, a crow jeering back, cacophony and complaint ripping into the blanket of quiet; and it is morning.

Yesterday afternoon I went to visit a friend in her new place, another diasporic central Mainer, shell-shocked in the lands of the south. I felt again my own bewilderment and sorrow, the grief of place.

That feeling lingers now--partly from the visit, partly as the natural elegy of summer fading to autumn . . . the land, even my tiny plot, singing its small song; the lands of my past rising up like clouds in my memory. 

But I tamp them down. It is all I can do. This morning I'll be back to my desk, and then in the afternoon I need to go into town for a Telling Room event, a book launch for the high school writers in the mentorship program I worked in last winter. The timing is awkward; I'm not sure I'll be able to get to my writing salon as well, but maybe I can figure that out. Midday I should probably deal with those green beans. They are coming in strong and threaten to overwhelm me.

The elegy and the chores intertwine. They are like the bean vines, delicate and grasping, fragile and impatient; strong enough for Jack to climb but liable to fail the Giant. I'm not sure which one I am.

A faint drizzle, roof drip pecking oil pipe, the slow clink of water on iron. 5 a.m. is dark these days, but the air is still thick with summer. The first birds are beginning to wake: invisible chittering in my neighbor's black walnut tree, fat raindrops sliding one by one from the maple leaves, chonk, onto the shed's steel roof, and the cicadas, up, down, on every side, creaking in quadrophonic symphony.

This has been a slogging work week, and I had a hard time getting out of bed this morning. But now that I'm here, I'm glad to be up. I like the darkness, the open windows, this intensity of sound. 

I found a bit of time yesterday afternoon to work on a revision, and this afternoon I'll go visit a friend at her new place. Editing is like living underwater, everything else a deep breath.

I've been reading Lori Ostlund's novel After the Parade, much of which is set in small-town Minnesota; and I've been thinking about smallness, the intensity of preconceived expectation, how people in Harmony thought they knew exactly what I was likely to do, if they thought about me at all. How they were probably correct.

Is it better to be dismissed as perpetually foolish, or to be entirely unknown and unconsidered?

We got an inch and half of rain last night . . . an inch and a half! What a blessing. I went out last night to our poetry group and kept getting distracted by the sound of downpour through the open windows, by the glint of drops under the streetlights. And then, later, in bed: to lie in the dark and listen to rain thrumming on the roof . . . that was the best sort of lullaby.

Today, I'll be back to desk work, but I hope to spend some time in the refreshed gardens as well. It's too soon to believe that our weather pattern has changed: I've got all kinds of transplanting plans, if only I could trust in rainfall. But at least this storm will be a temporary revival. Even before the rain, my tomato crop was starting to surge, so this afternoon I'll cook my first batch of sauce, and maybe freeze peppers too. The beans are busy and the kale is leafy and the cucumbers are prickly, and I have a ridiculous amount of basil. All this, with no real rain. Imagine what's about to happen now!

* * *

I've got a new poem, "About Mothers," up at Vox Populi.

And I want to remind you about this Saturday's online Frost Place class with Ian Ramsey: "The Path of Poetry: Words and Practices to Carry Us through Challenging Times." Cost is only $20; $30 with a plus-one. I'll be there, writing with you.

I spent my day off cleaning bathrooms and filling out a grant application, neither of which is relaxing, but so it goes. At least I got them finished before I have to refill my head with editing. Tom worked outside on the shed. When I wasn't toiling over linoleum or "a career narrative" (ugh), I picked vegetables, watered plants, ran the trimmer, wrote a letter, made cookies. It was a useful day, if not restful.

Today I'll be back to the editing pile: this job goes on and on, and the stack never seems to get shorter. And tonight my poetry workshop group meets, though I have no idea what I'll bring for them to pick at. I guess I need to figure that out.

I am wishing for a little vacation.

Still, we're supposed to get rain this afternoon, and that's a sort of holiday. 

 

Yesterday, at the farmers' market, I bought a dozen ears of tender white corn, boiled and cut it all from the cob, put two-thirds of the kernels into the freezer, and used the rest as the base for this salad. In addition to corn, I put in diced garden tomatoes, diced and sautéed garden peppers and onions, shredded garden basil, rice vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper. We ate it alongside local lobster and a homemade toasted roll, on a blue-checked tablecloth. Maine and summer, captured in a meal.

On the other hand, things are stupid-expensive at the farmers' market, which makes me grouchy. I am still used to rural farm stands--a dozen ears for $2--not these city prices. I can't grow corn myself; I don't have space for adequate pollination; but this market is made for some other kind of person. In a few weeks I'll be going up north for the Harmony Fair, and here's hoping I can snag another batch of corn, maybe even a box of canning tomatoes, without the city hoohah.

Tom spent all day hauling cedar planks back from the homeland, so now we have our shed siding. Today he's going to finish a few other pre-siding tasks, but maybe next week he'll reach the prettying-up stage. It will be exciting to watch that hideous red plywood disappear forever.

I've been reading Penelope Fitzgerald's The Beginning of Spring, and loving it again. It's really a gorgeous book, set in pre-Revolutionary Moscow, among expat Brits. Such an evocation of place, and confusion; the lives of children and adults, separate and overlapping; insiders and outsiders; premonitions and shocks; and glorious, eloquent, simple prose.

Otherwise, I had a dawdling day yesterday . . . some fitful gardening, a batch of lying around on the couch, a bit of classwork. Today I will try to be more useful.

 It is so pleasant to open my eyes on a Saturday morning and remember, "I don't have to work this weekend!" Plus, I slept in till 6, and was not mutilated by the cat. So far, everything is going great.

Now I am sitting with my coffee, listening to the neighborhood begin to wake up and considering my various this-n-thats for the day. I want to go to the farmers' market and buy new potatoes and a lot of sweet corn--some for now, but most to steam and then cut off the cob for the freezer. Lobsters are on sale at the fish market, so that will be my next stop. I have the usual home things to do: watering and laundry and such. Meanwhile, T will be heading up north to a sawmill near Harmony, to buy cedar planks for the shed siding . . . a long drive but a savings of several thousand dollars over lumberyard prices.

I say I'm not working this weekend, but of course I'm always working. I need to set up a website for an upcoming class; I've got revisions to mull, and books to read, etc., etc., etc., forever and forever. But I refuse to look at that editing project, and Zoom can take a hike. 

By the way, I think I forgot to tell you that Accidental Hymn had its first review. 

Yesterday was my parents' sixtieth wedding anniversary. It was also the fifth anniversary of closing on this house. This is what I wrote on the blog about that day:

Thank you--you know who you are--for your little notes of affection about the new house. Everything went perfectly at the closing, despite my irrational fears about having brought along the wrong amount of money, and 45 minutes after closing Tom was tearing out the old kitchen.

I did not do any gardening as it was pouring rain all day. But I did buy a wheelbarrow and work gloves. And I spent several hours wandering from room to room, trying to imagine new paint colors, re-sanded floors . . . actually, mostly not even thinking about those sensible things but simply looking out the windows and existing in the space. The neighbors have beautiful gardens: our yard is the local eyesore. There is a daunting amount of work to do, and I woke up at 4 a.m. this morning filled with worry. That's just night fears; in daylight I know I can manage it.

And yesterday I felt so peaceful listening to Tom tear out cabinets. I looked at the street in the rain. I went upstairs and stood in my tiny future study and wondered what books my eyes will light on as I lift my eyes from my writing. I leaned in the doorway of our bedroom and pictured how the morning shadows will fall on the bed. I went downstairs and stood in the big empty dining room and imagined a table set for a party and the scent of fresh bread lingering in the hallway.

And now, five years later, here we are. A mostly finished kitchen. Busy gardens. The scent of fresh bread does frequently linger in the hallway. Though not many big parties have taken place in the dining room, a few small ones have. I know those shadows on the bed, the books that my eyes light on.

Covid has sliced into our residence here. In this house, we have spent most of our years under that shadow. But it, too, has affected the life of the place. Paul became part of this house in a way he would not otherwise have done. My friendship with my neighbor grew because of isolation, even as my links outside this enclave frayed for the same reason. Five years is not very long, but Covid has felt like forever.

Still, we have been fortunate . . . to have landed in this house before the storm hit, for today houses like this one are apparently worth so much money that we could not afford to buy anything larger than a 700-square-foot condo. And we were lucky to have touched down in a place that is both city and province, urbane yet deeply local. Walking these streets, listening to the neighbor kids playing stickball, watching the neighbor cats prowl the yards, and yet at the same talking of Dante! The name Dante never left my mouth in Harmony.

Anyway, cheers to this little awkward house. Five years, and I've learned to love your ragtag ways, despite your hideous siding and your ridiculous multicolored plastic shutters; despite the bathroom shower that always finds a new way to leak. Look at that new shed, coming along so cheerfully! Look at those sunflowers! Happy adoption day, house. May your roof stay tight and your electricity hum.

It rained most of yesterday, most of last night, and now it is still raining, rain puddled on stairs and sidewalks, giant maples dense with rain, it runs from leaf cups onto roofs, into gutters, gardens sodden with rain, kale bowing to the ground, sunflower blooms swaying like enormous wet pocket watches, in the early morning dark, under the first crow calls, and on the avenue a bus hissing by--

I am wearing socks and a bathrobe as if winter has arrived, I am drinking coffee and listening to rain patter at the windowpanes, I am watching the rain-wet cat blink on a kitchen chair, the rain surrounds the house, a small rain, tapping like moths on a screen door--

Last night I woke and slept and woke and slept to rain, shingle-sluice and leaf-shimmer, sound as sight as dream, always the slow rattle of water, a mineral scent, stone and soil, and the cottage warmth of my own clean bed--

Cicadas creak in the darkness. The air is heavy, heavy, and finally we seem to have real rain on the way, forecast to start mid-morning and continue into the evening. It's hard to believe in it, but I am hoping.

Today will be another long desk day. At least I am making progress, and maybe I'll find a chance to step briefly back into my own work. I've been reading Lori Ostlund's short story collection The Bigness of the World, and that has been a respite: it's a very good collection, and now I am eager to track down other books. I discovered her in a Best American Short Stories volume I picked off the street, and these other stories are, for the most part, just as good as the first one I read.

Late yesterday afternoon I baked homemade hamburger rolls and then, before starting dinner, a batch of chocolate chip cookies. Tom was out at a meeting so while I was cooking I had a little private dance party, cranking my "Happy" playlist to eleven and bouncing around the kitchen. A bit of joyful noise is always a good idea. I should do it more often.

And I rode my bike in the morning, and today I'll grunt through my exercise class . . . I am reading, I am writing, I am hugging the wicked cat . . . I am trying hard to keep my carapace shiny, my heart bumptious, my brain astringent. Staying eager is such hard work.

* * *

FYI: I want to remind you of an upcoming Frost Place Studio Session, led by poet, athlete, and environmental activist Ian Ramsey. "The Path of Poetry: Words and Practices to Carry Us through Challenging Times" is a short, inexpensive, Saturday-afternoon gathering that will focus on poetry as way to care for ourselves and others. It's open to anyone, at any level of experience. I hope you can join us: August 27, 1-3:30 p.m. ET, via Zoom.

Yesterday was fine, I guess, but also unsettling things kept happening . . . the cat disappeared for hours and made me worry, I had a long anxious phone call with my worked-up mom, a friend has Covid in her household. As a result, I had a hard time buckling down to work, so on top of everything else I got to feel guilty. Just one of those days, apparently, but I would like not to have another one today.

It's dark now, and humid, and the cicadas are creaking. Still no rain, but we might get a few drops tomorrow. I dreamed vaguely of unfamiliar houses. I'm reading Lori Ostlund's story collection The Bigness of the World, which I'm liking a lot, but which also seems to be replicating my uneasy state of mind. 

But, in good news, my car passed inspection and does not need new tires. In good news, I filled the vases with fresh flowers. In good news, I ate ripe nectarines and my own freshly picked blueberries. In good news, the shed has a new door and new windows and is covered with strapping and looks terrible but progress!

Today I hope to settle into a better work pattern. This big editing project is dense and demanding, and I've also got a stack of cluttery smaller jobs to attend to. I'll go for a bike ride first, and clear my head with air and breeze. I'll try not to fret. 

Another cool morning, 56 degrees. Last night, eating dinner outdoors at our neighbor's, I wore a sweater, and now I am wearing a robe, and autumn creeps ever closer and closer.

Tom did end up working on the shed yesterday, a long day tinkering with doorframe and door, but now we have an entryway that that does not crack us in the forehead or require a sharp kick to shut. What a novelty! He estimates two more weekends of work, and I hope that's true. He needs some time off.

Meanwhile, I planted fall crops, weeded and watered, deadheaded blooms, cleaned bathrooms, made a big salad for our meal next door, and hung around Tom like a teenager watching her boyfriend work on his car.

But today we are back to our separate trails. He'll head off to the big house he's renovating. I've got to remember to bring my car to the garage for an inspection, and I've got so much editing to do, and I've got floors to clean, and my exercise class, and probably there's something else written on my calendar that I'm not remembering, and as you can see I am flustered already.

I know I haven't mentioned any national news for a while, but that doesn't mean I'm not worrying over it. Imagine a giant black pencil scribble on this page. Call it Mar-a-Lago and Salman Rushdie.

I slept late this morning, and woke to coolness. Now towels are churning in the washer, and I have taken possession of a small cup-and-saucer of black coffee and am resting in the pleasure of a day off. Yesterday's class seemed to end very well, so that feels good, but not working also feels good. These past few work weeks have been long.

My plan today is to sow my fall crops: spinach, lettuce, arugula, radishes. Yesterday morning I made space in the garden boxes--harvesting carrots and greens, transplanting cabbages and chard--and installed the cold frame in its winter home. Today I'll plant in the clean beds, and probably do some weeding as well, maybe turn to housework in the afternoon . . . or instead I might decide to flop in the hammock and read. I'm very open to redirection.

Yesterday, while I was teaching, Tom made the shed windows, a persnickety project, but they look beautiful. Maybe he'll take today away from the job; I don't know what his plan is, but he deserves some time off. Both of us have been so busy.

Last night, before I started dinner, we went for a slow cemetery amble, talking of this and that. He makes me peaceful. I am so fond of him.

The cat bite is healing and I'm feeling much better. What a strange little interlude. But it's mostly over now, and I am back in the saddle. This morning I'll deal with house stuff, this afternoon I'll be teaching, this evening I'll be shamelessly comma-splicing and frying fish cakes and braising the season's first kale harvest.

The late summer flowers are in their (drought-saddened) glory. The living-room mantle overflows with cosmos and zinnias, chive flowers and bachelor's buttons. And I particularly love this variety of cosmos, fragile blooms over feathery foliage, each flower like crepe paper.

The Monson Arts team is getting ready to restart the high school program this fall, so I've been working on a small description of it, to share with partner schools. Just writing it made me excited: I wish, wish, wish I'd had this chance when I was fifteen. But that is the sweet thing about my job: I can invent the class I wish I'd been able to take.

The Monson Arts high school studio program offers a cohort of talented local students the opportunity to participate in an intense, school-year-long studio experience on the campus of Monson Arts. The program has two branches: one for visual art, led by Alan Bray; one for writing, led by Dawn Potter. Both instructors are full-time working artists who will guide students into closer knowledge of what it means to make art the center of a life: helping them hone their craft, build bonds with other young artists from around the region, and become more confident about their future as creative makers.

This is a studio experience, not an academic class. It is designed for students who are self-motivated, quirky, and curious, who may or may not be classically “good at school” but have the potential to thrive in a free-wheeling, focused, creative environment.

 

I was having kind of a blah day--not feeling quite myself--and then the mail arrived, with a big box from my friend Mary, and inside was this gorgeous bowl made by potter Jemma Gascoine, who works up north in Monson, and look how perfectly it matches the kitchen tile! Mary's gift cheered me up so much, as did the nap I took shortly thereafter.

My blah day was the result of an infected cat bite on my arm. Ruckus got too excited about playing and sank his teeth into me, and the vampire wounds swelled up and turned colors and clearly intended to make trouble. I cleaned the bite and slathered it with antibiotic cream and talked to my doctor, etc., and the punctures are healing and the swelling is going down. But the infection fight has made my body tired, and I ended up staying home from last night's writing salon . . . I just did not have the wherewithal to make chatty conversation. Funny how something as insignificant as a minor infection can have such a whole-body impact.

I still did a ton of editing, and cooked and washed clothes and picked vegetables and rode my bike and such. It's not like I was incapacitated. Mostly I just wasn't eager for society.

I'm peppier this morning, so apparently I was correct to give in to yesterday's droopiness. And the swelling is continuing to go down on my arm, so things are progressing in the right direction. I've got another long editing day at my desk. I should grocery-shop and prep for tomorrow afternoon's class. I'll do my exercise session and water the gardens and maybe try to work on a poem draft. I'll find something to put into my beautiful new bowl. Last night I filled it with sliced peaches. Today, maybe pale green peppers.

Yesterday was strikingly cool, the temp never climbing out of the 60s, and I made leek soup and cheese biscuits for dinner and slept with a blanket pulled up to my chin. Now, an early-morning chill seeps into the house; the darkness hints at September; I begin to imagine stoking a wood stove again, and brewing hot tea.

I'm not sorry to see the brutal heat fade into the past, but I wish this autumnal turn would carry along some rain. No such fortune, however.

I never did get to writing yesterday, but I did catch up on some of the heavier outdoor chores: running the trimmer, hauling soil. This morning I hope to go for a bike ride, after I water and hang laundry, before I dip back into my editing pile. I may or may not go out to the writing salon tonight; I may or may not snatch a chance to ponder my notebook scrawls. I feel somewhat overwhelmed by work, somewhat unable to justify my own spaciousness. That will pass, I know, but for the moment I'm driven by duties.

Of course we got no more rain, but at least I had one day when I didn't have to water. Sigh.

And at least today will be cool. Open windows and hushed fans. Clouds and fog.

I have been working steadily at my desk, and making decent progress, so I may quit the editing early today and do some writing and gardening instead. Till now, it's been too hot to get much done outside, other than watering and harvesting, and I have soil to haul and weeding to do and other such sweaty chores to put behind me. Likewise, I have a notebook full of scribbles that I should start combing into drafts.

I've been reading T. S. Eliot, without much joy; finishing Austen's Pride and Prejudice for the hundred thousandth time, browsing here and there in Roger Angell's baseball essays. I've been picking beans and eggplants and tomatoes and peppers and so much basil. I've got two new poems out in On the Seawall, alongside a review of Phillip B. Williams's latest collection. (I just taught with him at the Frost Place Seminar, so that was a nice surprise.) I wore a new dress to get my hair cut, for no other reason than because I had a new dress.

I am 57 years old and still get a charge out of a new dress. I hope that never changes.

It rained last night, and I can hear the sounds of dripping from trees and roof, though the sun isn't up yet so I can't see how wet anything actually is. Still, the drips are promising, as is the possibility of more scattered rain today. Every little downpour is precious. My tomatoes are half their accustomed height, and already beginning to yellow. The potatoes never flowered before their foliage began fading away. The shallow-rooted vegetables do better because my daily watering revives them, but the deep-rooted plants are suffering. I can keep them alive but they don't flourish.

Whatever our rain situation turns out to be, we clearly are going to have a damp and sticky day. Briefly, yesterday, the temperature dropped and the humidity lifted and I found myself wondering if I was going to have to remember what a long-sleeved shirt felt like. But that was short-lived; already we are back in the thick.

For the moment, though, the air machine is hushed and the windows are open, and the cicadas are creaking invisibly in the trees. I'll be editing again today, getting a haircut this afternoon, not hanging laundry on the outside lines, maybe not even watering the garden. What a vacation! . . . I am so sick of that hose.

Last night I made the most delicious salad: chunks of roasted eggplant, steamed green beans, slices of fresh tomato, seared shishito peppers, arugula, cilantro, olive oil, rice vinegar, salt and pepper. A dream of summer, in a big pottery bowl.

Even in a drought I have a garden of delights--though the delights are very hard work this year.

"[Mrs. Morgan] had found out the wonderful difference between anticipation and reality; and that life, even to a happy woman married after long patience to the man of her choice, was not the smooth road it looked, but a rough path enough cut into dangerous ruts, through which generations of men and women followed each other without ever being able to mend the way."

--Mrs. Oliphant, The Perpetual Curate (1864)

* * *

Margaret Oliphant (1829-97) published journalism, biography, literary history, translations, travel accounts, and nearly 100 novels. Widowed in 1859, she wrote furiously to pay her husband's debts and to support her children. The Perpetual Curate bears a certain resemblance to the work of Anthony Trollope--a focus on the secular, rather than spiritual, lives of the English clergy; an exploration of the minutiae of Victorian gender relations--but, unlike Trollope, Oliphant did not necessarily see female meekness as strength, nor, as you can see from the above quotation, did she romanticize marriage.

It's been interesting spending time with her novel over the past week. Even as she unrolled a predictably wholesome and happy-ending plot, she inserted small daggers everywhere: wives who cannot wholeheartedly adore their husbands, nice young gentlemen who minister sweetly to the poor while stupidly ignoring the emotions and anxieties of the local shopkeepers. If Trollope worked to codify Victorian definitions of gentility, Oliphant slyly questioned them. I was very pleased to be reading this book. 

* * *

Yesterday was so hot that Tom decided not to work outside at all. He spent the morning at the photo co-op, scanning negatives; and I cleaned bathrooms and then suddenly decided that I was going to stop doing housework. I needed a day off too, so I slowed myself down: read Roger Angell's gorgeous and hilarious descriptions of baseball spring training in 1962 Florida, made gazpacho and mint-chocolate-chip ice cream, took a nap next to the fan, gave in to the torpor of an August 92-degree Sunday.

But today I'll be back in the saddle: stacks of editing, the housework I didn't do yesterday, a phone call with Teresa about The Four Quartets, our borrow-a-daughter Lucy coming over for dinner. The outside air is as thick as peanut butter, and even with the AC the house air is sticky. We got a tiny burst of rain last night, which watered nothing, and only made the humidity denser. This weather is tiring.

At 6 a.m. it's 74 degrees outside, with a small hot wind. I turned on the air machine last night, so the house is relatively cool at the moment, but we are in for a scorcher.

I am feeling unsettled and sad, having just woken up from a dream about my grandfather's farm, which was in deep decay . . . piles of rotting tires, turpentine pouring through broken floors, and the perimeter surrounded by new-built castles and harsh electronic gates . . . the shabby land in its prison. In the dream we'd forgotten the place had really been gone for more than 30 years. All I could think of in dream-time was the fact that no one had changed the sheets for three decades; no one had turned on the lamps. I had no flashlight. I was walking the land by the reflected light of a knife blade.

This place that survives only in memory and in poems. Every time I dream of it, I am so lonesome, all over again.

I think yesterday's craft talk went pretty well . . . at least people talked, and shouldn't that be the sign? I was pretty nervous about it, however, and am glad to have it behind me. Though I guess I now know how to do a craft talk, and don't need to be nervous if it ever happens again.

It's been so hot and sticky here. The air machine was on all day and all night, but I think I should be able to turn it off today, as we've got a slight temperature respite. Tomorrow will be in the 90s, and I'll save the electricity bill for then.

So, this morning, housework and garden work; this afternoon, teaching. Meanwhile, Tom will be working on the shed, poor man . . . 

The air is so thick this morning. It's 71 degrees at 5:30 a.m., and I guess I'm going to have to break down and turn the air machine back on. But for the moment I still have the windows open to the warmth, to the jays squawking, to the greeny early morning light. 

Last night I went out to write at the salon, and now I've got three solid blurts to consider, someday, when I find my leisure again. I doubt that will be soon, as I have to teach a craft lecture this morning for the Frost Place Poetry Seminar, a writing class tomorrow afternoon for the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, and I'll be editing in between.

I've been catching up on the seminar's faculty readings; I've still got one more to go, which I hope I can fit in this morning. I haven't attended any of the other seminar talks or workshops (mostly because I was afraid I'd chatter inappropriately), so the readings are giving me a sense of previous conversations, and may help me call on some themes or ideas that have circled among the participants this week.

Otherwise, same-old, same-old . . . laundry and watering, cooking and sweeping. I have two big eggplants to harvest today, so that's what we'll be having for dinner, with peaches and whipped cream for dessert. A summer plate. A prayer for rain.

Yesterday's little jaunt to western Maine was so, so lovely. Zanne and I drove out about an hour and half to Lucia's house, on the shore of a clear and quiet lake. We ate lunch looking out over the water, as the hummingbirds whizzed by and the loons wailed. And then we went swimming in water that was as warm and welcoming as a bath . . . no biting insects, no tangling weeds, just dragonflies and conversation and late-afternoon summer sun. It might have been the nicest swim I've ever taken, which means a lot coming from me, because I am fussy, incompetent, and uncomfortable swimmer.

So today I am feeling sweetened and refreshed. I've got a big new editing project on my desk, and a late-morning meeting with the Monson folks, and all of my usual house and garden demands, but now I can think about my swim too.

I need to spend time with Eliot's Four Quartets today, and I need to fiddle a bit with tomorrow's craft lecture. I'd like to watch the videos of the seminar readings, which I haven't been able to attend live. 

But for now I am sitting in the early-morning darkness, listening to the cicadas creak, listening to a plane take off, listening to an ambulance wail. The city awake. 

 

Yesterday was a good day. I spent the morning with my friend Julia, walking through the neighborhood and chattering about Sexton and Millay and raising pigs and fixing poetry education and gardening on ledge and other such riveting topics. Then, after lunch, I started a new editing project and got paid for a teaching job and was invited to read this fall with my beloved Meg Kearney and ate too many cheese curls. I sat outside in the evening warmth with Tom and won at cribbage, then made a frittata for dinner and listened to the Red Sox play a good game of baseball for a change.

This morning I'll work at my desk, and this afternoon I'm going with some poet friends for an outing out to western Maine to eat lunch with another friend, swim in her lake (maybe; I'm a reluctant swimmer), and no doubt yakking the whole way there and back. Poets are so talky! Is it a reaction to how solitary we are while writing? Or is it a side-effect of word drunkenness?

This poet social life is just strange. For decades, I rarely saw a poet. And now they are everywhere.

Apparently my reading last night for the Frost Place Seminar was available on Facebook Live, but I didn't know it would be, so didn't let you know. However, here's the video, if you're interested. I had a webcam emergency right before the reading, so you'll see that I'm zooming from Tom's badly lit study. Despite the shadows, you'll also get to see Tom's photos behind me, which might be a nice change from looking at my books.

Okay: step 1 of unexpected work week behind me. I think the reading went okay, despite technical upsets, and I'd best figure out that webcam situation before Friday. 

This morning my friend Julia is stopping by for a visit and a walk, so that will be a refreshment. The air is notably cool this morning, though the day will heat up quickly. We need rain again, as always, yet the beans and cucumbers and peppers are pouring in, and above them the sunflowers are grinning and nodding. Summer still manages to delight.

And I will be chipping away at my craft talk, and reading, and watering, and hanging laundry, and weeding the sidewalk gardens, and perhaps Erato, that doughty muse, will amble by with her dog and her coffee cup, and croak me a little song.

Bachelor's buttons with a background of shed: T worked from morning till night, and I did housework and some editing and filled the vases. I love the blue of these blossoms, a rare cerulean among the midsummer oranges and golds.

And these are my first cut sunflowers, staring out of their ginger jar. Good practice: always check a sunflower for bees before you bring it into the house.

And here is the carpenter, screwing down strapping to hold the metal sheathing. He labored till close to 8 p.m. to get the job done, but now we have a solid roof.

I feel bad that he's got a whole work week ahead of him; he put in some long, long days this weekend. 

* * *

With my own week suddenly in an uproar, I was glad to snatch some editing time yesterday. I've mostly finished up that little project: a few tweaks and I can send it off to the author. Then I can turn my attention to preparing my Friday craft talk and those Saturday writing workshops, not to mention tonight's reading. Midweek is scattered with poet visits--Julia here on Tuesday, a day trip to Lucia's on Wednesday--so I need to buckle down today.

* * *

My poem "For David" appears in Vox Populi today. It's dedicated to my friend David Dear, who emailed me the Plath quotation in the epigraph, which I then used as a writing prompt.