I sit here, on this rainy Monday morning, basking in the warm inner glow that comes from knowing that all of our firewood is under cover. By noon yesterday Tom and I had stowed the entire pile of green in the shed, and around the edges I'd mowed grass, cut a bushel of chard, and started a pot of tomato sauce. So in the afternoon, as the first bands of rain came through, I processed greens, finished the sauce, got everything into the freezer, and then spent a couple of hours flopped on the couch, listening to baseball and reading Middlemarch. Eventually, for dinner, I roasted mackerel with parsley and lemon, served it with zucchini pancakes and a Greek-style broccoli salad, and we ate in front of an old Star Trek episode . . . and thus went the tale of Sunday at the Alcott House.

This morning I'll be back to my small editing project. Rain is forecast off and on all week, and already the temperatures are much cooler, though still humid. I'm so engaged with Middlemarch this time around: I can barely put the book down, though I've read it a thousand times before. I hope I can manage to get something else done, but it's possible that George Eliot might win out.

And I should send some poems to journals. I've got a stack of finished pieces, but I so dislike submitting. That and washing windows: two chores I always find a reason to skip.

Next week my teaching season restarts. I'll be in Monson for the first high school session of the year and then spend the following weekend on zoom immersed in Rilke. I'm looking forward to it all, but also am feeling a little elegiac about summer and its shapeless days. Maybe I should just give in to George Eliot and let Middlemarch have this week.