All day the air hinted at thunderstorms--a humid breathlessness, sudden swirls of breeze. By evening the local TV station was rolling "nickel-sized hail" banners above the Celtics game, and I was undergoing we-live-under-monstrous-maple-trees dread. But the premonitions were wrong: instead of hail and damaging winds, what we got was a long night of warm slow rain. This morning, the yards and gardens are glowing with early summer magnificence. The tomato plants may have grown a foot overnight.

My ankle seems to be mending. This morning it feels a hundred times better than it did yesterday at this time, though it's still puffy and red. And despite my limp I had a good day. My publisher and I chose three photos as cover possibilities for the next collection. I had a long and lovely phone conversation with my oldest poet friend. Outside I refreshed all of the flowerpots, replacing the tired spring pansies with gazania seedlings I'd bought at the farmers' market--a new flower to me, but apparently a common and lovely sight in California. My neighbor offered me two big glazed pots that a tenant had left behind--pots that would have cost me a fair amount of money to buy--so I set them up in the backyard and filled them with free leftover flower seedlings from another friend. In the garden I planted a flat of Thai basil . . . such a gorgeous scent: irresistible.

And now the rain has washed everything down, and the new seedlings are stretching their leaves into the wet air and their roots into the wet soil.

And I am sitting in my couch corner, having slept in till 6, with nothing particular on the schedule for the weekend, except for my small home chores and whatever T and I suddenly decide to do together. We have discussed taking a ferry ride to Peaks Island, if my gimpy ankle is up to walking. Or maybe we'll just ride the mailboat, which makes a circuit of four or five bay islands, skirting open ocean but motoring far enough out to guarantee sea spray in our faces and a chance of porpoises.

Last night, despite the ominous forecast, we managed to eat dinner outside under the dangerous maples. I am so enjoying these al fresco evenings. We linger much longer at the table than we do when we're inside, though our little library-dining room is a pleasant-enough place. But outside . . . the green, the evening bird calls, the small neighborly sounds. The back yard, once a desert of dirt and dog droppings, has taken on a Secret Garden sweetness, with its fence of shrubs and blossoms. We sat at our round table beside the clotheslines and we ate chicken braised in coconut milk and spices, ate roasted potatoes and baby spinach, our bowls freshened with cilantro and Thai basil and lime. We poured cold tea from a frosted mason jar. We wondered where the cat was. [Answer: stuck in the neighbors' garage.] Sometimes I tremble at the present tense. The abundance. The brief Eden.