Such a nice day yesterday . . . a boat ride to Great Diamond Island, a walk among the old-fashioned shingle-style cottages on one side of the island, then through the old military neighborhood on the other side. A beach, ospreys, bright sunshine and puffy clouds. Lunch, and then a beautiful windy boat ride back to Portland. It is lovely to live so close to these islands--a quick jaunt across the water, and suddenly we're in a different world. This really is a beautiful city.

Today I'll be in the garden--more kale to process, lots of weeding and watering and deadheading, and I should get out the trimmer and deal with the grass. My sunflowers are weary, and the zinnias are beginning to tire as well. Still, they stay bright, and the bees and butterflies are busy.

I've started rereading Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey--such a funny book. Austen is so wry and ironic and eye-rolling about what people expect of novel heroines. I love that every one of her books centers around a different style of young woman: Emma is rich, confident, and bossy, with a pushover dad; Elizabeth is quick-witted and reckless, with trashy family members; Fanny is shy, religious, poor, and obstinate, with unsympathetic family members; Anne is aging on the outside and passionate on the inside, with pompous family members; Elinor and Marianne are too buttoned up and too emotional; Catherine is a naive, unsophisticated devourer of Gothic novels. A whole world of young women, and not one is like the others.