Twenty-two degrees in Portland this morning--by far our coldest moment this season. Yesterday I pulled out the remaining fennel and cut a big bouquet of parsley for drying. Now the extant crops have dwindled down to a few broccoli sprouts, some hardy herbs, a bit of weary chard and arugula, and a boatload of enthusiastic kale. Still, that's not bad for almost-Thanksgiving in Maine. Unless we get a big snow, we should have garden produce for the holiday.

But said holiday is weighing heavily on my mind. On Tuesday I'm driving north to teach; home on Wednesday. On Thursday I'm getting Covid and flu shots. On Friday I'm driving to Vermont to see my parents and sister; home on Sunday. Then my older son and his partner arrive on Monday, my younger son and his partner arrive on Tuesday, the holiday ensues . . . and you may have noticed that there is zero space in this schedule for housecleaning, grocery shopping, shot malaise, or mental preparation.

So I've made the sad decision that I cannot spend today baking Emily Dickinson's black cake. The cake may not materialize at all this year. Instead, I've got to go to Target and buy another set of sheets; I need to focus on creating detailed dinner menus and shopping lists for Thanksgiving week; I need to catch up with a few work odds and ends. It's possible that, after the holiday, I'll snag a day to bake Em's cake. But it's a complicated project, and I don't have the wherewithal to do it today.

Yesterday, though, I did have a few quiet hours. Midafternoon I lit the wood stove and settled onto the couch with my notebook and my laptop, and I teased out a new poem from my scrawl . . . a draft I'm very pleased with, that went into a surprising place formally, that felt intelligent and direct and a little bit magical. Maybe I'll find another few hours today. Right now, I think that's more important than getting the cake baked.