I hoped the heat might break yesterday, but no. So I hauled firewood and dragged brush, and T chainsawed and dragged brush, and we were sweaty and unenthusiastic, but we made progress. The broken branches were cleared out of the yards, some of the firewood got into the shed, and today--finally, maybe--the heat will break.

There's still a big hole in the back fence, which T will have to patch; and there's still a lot of firewood to get into the shed . . . plus, grass desperately in need of mowing, greens to freeze, tomatoes to cook down into sauce. But the stuff will get done, somehow--if not today, later in the week. And we'd like to walk over to Porchfest, the annual neighborhood music festival, which I haven't gone to in years (last year, Covid; the years before, teaching). The first time we went, we found ourselves standing next to our senator, Angus King, who was bopping to the blues. It was a typical Maine incident. You meet a governor at a poetry reading; you run into a senator at the grocery store. Happens all the time.

And last night's dinner party also felt quintessentially local, in a really sweet way. I'd bought three cooked lobsters at the fish market, and in the evening our next-door neighbor came by, and the three of us each picked a lobster, added mayonnaise, red onion, dill, and seasonings, cut a slab from a baguette, and made our own lobster rolls. We carried our plates over to her backyard table and sat in the slightly mosquitoey gloaming, drinking cold rose and eating magnificent lobster, and it was so extremely summery, so pleasant, so Maine.

I am still having a little love affair even with the idea of neighbors, after all those many years in the woods. Imagine!--people really do hang over the fences and talk. People really do sit in each other's backyards and eat dinner and chatter about this and that, and then, when the evening is over, they amble back to their own unlocked doors. It is so surprising to me. Somehow I thought that kind of thing only happened in Updike novels (and always ended badly).

It's been an emotional and distracting and mixed-up weekend . . . mourning for Curtis, dealing with tree mess, resting in neighborly comforts; and now today is my sister's birthday, which always feels almost like my own birthday. They're so close together on the calendar, and we've always been so aware of each other's turning moments. But these days, all of the moments feel like turning moments. Every one of them vibrates. Look, the trees are silhouetted against the darkening sky. Look, the crows are flying home.