I made a plum cake for last night's salon . . . and if you happen to own The Joy of Cooking, you might look it up because this is a beautiful, simple, and unusual way to feature peaches or plums: a thin circle of biscuity dough invisibly supporting a corona of caramelized fruit that somehow is not a juicy mess but a tender sliceable dessert.

This morning the fog is thick and sea-smelling, but the wildfire smoke is gone and temperatures are supposed to moderate, and I think it will be a lovely open-window day. I'll work at my desk, then shift into housework mode after lunch, putter in the flowerbeds, read Sybille Bedford's novel The Legacy in the hammock, un-pin sheets from the line, amble in the cemetery . . . not all of these things, I'm sure, but some of them. My solitary July continues, long days alone, decorated with small spurts of sociability, punctuated by T's return home in the evenings. I am a breath unto myself, a white cabbage moth flitting among the broccoli plants, a dandelion feather.