5:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning, and, unusually, I am writing to you from my bedroom. The fan is humming; the window is a dim rectangle in the dark. Outside, in the lilac, a bluejay is screeching.

Under normal circumstances I would already be downstairs and T would be here, but for the duration we are sleeping in separate rooms, so I am trying out how it feels to write from here. I am still not sick, and he is still not well, though yesterday his symptoms seemed to be shifting from flu-like to cold-like. He's continues to be exhausted, napping for hours each day, but he did manage to wash the dinner dishes last night, so that's a small sign of returning energy. Maybe today will be the turning point. It's sad to see him so ill.

But I am relieved to have (thus far) dodged the bullet. I'll be zoom-teaching this afternoon, baking bread this morning, maybe working in the garden a little. If I have time, I'd like to weed the strawberry patch.

Yesterday I tore out the paste tomatoes, which were almost completely dried up, and planted spinach and arugula for the fall. The groundhog, in the meantime, has vanished again, maybe because I blocked up his local hole. Let's hope this keeps working because he has a taste for late-season crops: fennel, kale, lettuce. The only things he avoids are leeks.