Yesterday evening T and I drove over to the Eastern Prom and strolled along the water, along with many other happy Portlanders, on what might have been the first gorgeous Saturday evening of the season--staring out at the moored sailboats, speculating about giant yachts, panting up the awkward stone stairway to the street. And then we wandered over to the other side of the hill and ate dinner at Cong tu Bot, a hoppin' Vietnamese place filled with muttering dance music and tattooed young people and cold wine and incredibly delicious summery food. And then we walked up to the park on North Street and watched the sun set over the city and Back Cove; spotted our own neighborhood steeple across the estuary; gazed at the traffic snaking down the highway, the lights glowing over the Sea Dogs' field, the gulls and crows sailing toward their nighttime roosts. And then we drove 10 minutes back to our little garden nest.

On such nights the move to Portland does feel like the right decision. The city is small but so lively; our house is tucked close to that liveliness but still a peaceable homestead. Watery beauty, shady walks, fish piers,  a neighborhood library, mushroom foraging, a trellis of green beans in my front yard . . . I should complain about nothing.

We've had a brief and much-appreciated respite from bad weather, but today the heat will return, climbing into the 90s by mid-week. I'll do a bit of gardening this morning, and maybe in the afternoon I'll once again venture into the shops and try to find an outdoor dinner table. I've got pork chops to marinate for dinner; new carrots and kohlrabi to julienne for salad; green beans, chard, and lettuce to harvest; sage to cut and hang up for drying.

I'm still reading Bedford's The Legacy. I've got some poem blurts to transcribe from notebook scratches. I'll listen to evening baseball on the radio.

O summer.