It's peony season here in Maine--such beautiful flowers, such sloppy plants. No matter how carefully I tie them up, they always collapse and shatter.

This morning, the vases are full of peonies and the house is full of scent, usually a sign that spring is morphing into summer. Yet summer doesn't seem like a season to bank on. Thus far, cold rain has undermined every brief warm spell, and my vegetable garden has never looked worse. It's hard to picture a harvest.

But I'm not complaining, I'm not complaining. Today will be sunshiny, a good day for house and yard chores; a good day to eat my breakfast outside with a book; a good day to mull at my desk beside a wide-open window. I ought to go out to write tonight, but so far this week I've only spent one evening at home, and that feels wrong. Tomorrow night I'll be in Kittery for a reading, and then I'll be on the road for much of Saturday for my Winthrop reading. So I'm torn about tonight.

Anyway, I'll figure it out. In the meantime, I've got to write introductions for the faculty performances at Monson, I've got to plot out my three upcoming and very different readings, I've got to scrub bathrooms and weed the vegetable beds . . . The day unfolds.