This is a breathless time of year, harvest-wise, even in my tiny plot. Last night's dinner featured various combinations of tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, peppers, onions, fennel, and a variety of herbs. I stuff as many vegetables into a meal as I can, and still the bowls on the counter overflow with tomatoes and I can't cram the lid onto the container of cucumbers. It's hard to remember that within a few weeks all of this will be gone and we'll be on autumn rations.

Busyness overwhelms me. I beetle away at a manuscript, then come downstairs for a break and end up cleaning out the linen closet or running out to the dry cleaners to pick up our winter coats or cutting up tomatoes for sauce. Ever since Tom installed dividers in a couple of kitchen cabinets, we've found ourselves completely rethinking our storage situations: move one thing from one place, and suddenly everything needs to be changed up. Thus the linen closet steps into the fray. But the resulting order and sense is gratifying, given how few closets we have. We have to contrive like sailors in this place.

Today will be more editing, more errands, more garden. I finished rereading Northanger Abbey and now I am beginning the big history book I bought in NYC, Pekka Hamalainen's Indigenous Continent. My facsimile copy of Lyrical Ballads arrived in the mail. I have Jeannie's new collection to read. I need to teach on Saturday. I should set up my Lear project with my kids. I have to start planning two separate book launches. I've got a stack of online classes looming, plus an overnight to Monson next week. My Vermont family will descend on Portland a few days after I get back. A pile of green firewood will soon be dumped in the driveway. I have to get my rust-bucket car into the body shop. If my hair isn't yet on fire, it's certainly smoldering.