On the first 40-degree Sunday afternoon of the season, we went to Crescent Beach in Cape Elizabeth and trudged under this landscape-painter sky, over this curve of wet sand, alongside these slow wrinkles of seawater. Afterward we stopped at a tap house and ate poutine and drank beer and played cards, and then we spent the rest of the evening reading on the couch in front of the fire. And that is why I did no housework, and why I'll be doing it all today.

Our son arrives tonight, so I'll be preparing for that too: turning my study into a bedroom for the week, figuring out a general idea for meals, pulling myself together for our travels up to Monson tomorrow. It will be sweet to have him for such a long stretch--the longest since the pandemic, when he lived with us for a year and a half.

And maybe I'll get to that rose pruning too. Or maybe I'll steal a nap instead. This time change is not easy on people who have to get up at 5 a.m. every weekday.

I've almost finished rereading Far from the Madding Crowd, and I don't have anything lined up to start next--always an uneasy feeling. But something will shout at me from the shelves.