Just outside the bedroom window, in the big lilac, a red-headed cardinal announced Bur-bee, bur-bee, bur-blatblatblatblatblatblat, loud as a sergeant, sweet as a baby giggle, and every bed lounger (cat especially) woke up instantly, all of us a-flutter over our avian alarm clock.

Spring! Season of overexcited birds and rampant maple seedlings! I spent two hours on my knees yesterday ripping them out of the back gardens, and, still, they sprout everywhere. But I am making progress, slowly: uncovering beds, cleaning up the lingering detritus from last fall's construction project, and maybe today I'll have a chance to haul out the chairs and the hammock and arrange the place for summer.

Maybe, but my primary task today is food--grocery shopping for our cottage weekend, and then prepping meals--a lasagna, marinated chicken, a couple of desserts--because the little kitchen on the island, as sweet as it is, isn't ideal for serious cooking, and I've got six people to feed. And then, on top of that, I'll need to make actual Friday-night dinner for the kids, who will be arriving off the bus, eager for seafood.

I'm definitely feeling some holiday-style pressure, but cooking is fun, and I've carved out the day for it. If I can fit in some gardening around the edges, that will be frosting on the knife.

I finished reading Kenneth Roberts's Northwest Passage, and now I'm starting a biography of Katherine Mansfield. Teresa and I gabbled about Donne yesterday, and now I've got a new batch of Donne poems to work through. I've been paging through various poetry collections to prep for my Wednesday-night classes. I went out to write last night and came home with some odd but possibly salvageable blurts. I'm hoping to find a bit of time on the island to mull over my essay . . . but if I don't, that's fine. The cottage always puts me into a good frame of mind, and whatever ensues will be just right. It is a place where I can step out of my routine while also stepping into myself, and I trust it implicitly.