It's raining gently outside, which is exactly the weather I was hoping for. After a weekend of planting, rain is the perfect response. And it's supposed to get warm today too, our first leap into the 60s. Everything brown will green, green, green, and the Carolina wren will spill his song from the neighbor's budding crabapple.

Yesterday I brought in a bouquet of hyacinths, and this morning the house is drenched with scent. The new seeds are soaking up rainwater--radishes, dill, cilantro, lettuce, spinach, sweet peas. I sowed flower seeds in various beds--one a mix of old-fashioned cottage garden varieties, the other a mix of shade lovers. If the birds don't eat them and I don't accidentally weed them out, the bursts of color and shape should be glorious.

I'm always so hopeful, and yet things always go wrong--flood, drought, insects, fungus, groundhogs, birds, squirrels, rabbits . . . all of them lie in wait. Still, the hope persists. I think it's good to have a realm for unreasonable optimism.

Today I need to clean the house. I've got to make a final pass through my Monson kids' submitted work. There's a fat stack of editing on my desk. I'm meeting tomorrow with Teresa and Jeannie about some dream poems we've been drafting. I ought to run a few errands. It will be a short work week as T and I are heading up to Mount Desert Island on Thursday for our spring visit to the cottage. The forecast is rain and I do not care. If we spend all weekend drinking tea and staring into Goose Cove, that will be fine with me.

Meanwhile, Young Chuck leans against my shoulder and purrs into my ear. The Red Sox have won two straight series and are starting to look less hapless. Hungarians voted out Orban. Rain murmurs at the window. I'm glad to be awake and listening.