Alarm went off at 4:30 this morning as we have to bring T's truck out of town to get a brake-line job, and then he has to bring me home and then borrow my car to go to work, and all of this driving around cuts into his get-ready-for-work time, so voila. 4:30. Blah.

At least I got the coffee made. And I have a couple of seconds to sit here on the couch with it, before I have to clump up the stairs to get dressed.

Yesterday I wrote up some class plans and did some editing. I went for a walk with my neighbor, and I worked outside, cleaning up the stick pile, weeding the vegetable-garden beds. And then I noticed that, two houses up, there were police cars parked outside, a crime-scene van, a firetruck. Something was going on at Ray's house. Turns out he was dead.

So that was an unsettling end to the day. Apparently he'd died in the house, and not very recently. He lived alone, and I saw him often, tinkering with his cars. But I didn't see him every day, certainly not since we'd been on vacation. He could have been in there a while.

Sign of spring on the Alcott House homestead: the lenten roses in full glory. I love these flowers (also known as hellebore). The buds begin to show in March and open alongside the crocuses, but they often last into the heat of the summer--sturdy and elegant and unperturbed.

You may or may not remember that, during the pandemic, my son gave names to all of the micro-sections of our micro-property. This is what he calls the Hill Country, the slope between our driveway and our neighbors', and right now it is a sea of sky-blue scylla. Note the new arch that I've just installed, to replace the one that blew over in a storm. Soon it will be covered with roses and clematis.

 And no photo gallery is complete without a portrait of Ruckus sleeping in a fire pit.

***

Yesterday afternoon's yard work was prosaic: breaking up sticks for kindling; retrieving the hose from the basement and setting it up outside. Today I hope to do some weeding and cultivating. Our plot is little, but there's still much to be done, and I only have an hour or so in the afternoons to devote to it. But gradually I'm making progress.

This morning I need to work on class planning; I need to put in some editing time; I need to deal with emails and hang laundry and do my exercises. I don't know when I'm going to find time to revise poems, or even to go back and look at the notes I made during the eclipse. And the spring air is glorious. It's hard to stay inside. 

I did get outside yesterday afternoon, and I did get many things planted: peas, potatoes, onions, arugula, radishes. It felt so good to be scratching around in the dirt and then afterward, from the house windows, to glimpse the black earth rows, fluffy and soft from the cultivator, so tidy and full of promise.

Today, in and among my desk and grocery responsibilities, I'll get outside again. I want to do some weeding; I want to bag up sticks. I want to hang clothes on the line. The cat, who is loath to let me out of his sight, will be delighted. There's nothing he likes better than hanging around in his own yard with his own people.

I've been reading a history of the Comanches, S. C. Gwynne's Empire of the Summer Moon. I've been working with student poems, getting them ready for display. I've been making risotto with the last of my foraged maitake mushrooms. I've been editing a book about mothering during the pandemic. I've been discovering a leaky pipe in the basement.

Other stuff: On Saturday I've got a reading at the Gibbs Library in Washington, Maine. And DeLuge Journal has just published an issue featuring the members of my Thursday night writing group, the May Street Writers. All of our poems in the issue are responses to the same prompt, so reading them will give you an idea of how rich and varied this process can be.

Greetings from the old familiar couch corner. Greetings from little Alcott House on its little blooming plot. Greetings from the little neighborhood, quieted by school-vacation week but still rife with singing cardinals. Greetings from the cat, who is so, so happy we're home; who follows us up and down the stairs and in and out through the doors like a devoted little terrier.

We arrived home in the early afternoon, which gave me time to hang clean clothes on the outdoor lines, to open the windows, to pick up sticks from the most recent storms, to set up the new rose arch and the pea trellis, to fill a dishpan with baby kale. Last year's wintered-over crop has recovered spectacularly. It's a treat to have such bountiful early greens, enough to harvest in quantity for salad and for roasting.

The weather this week will be glorious--highs in the sixties and no significant rain in the forecast. I'm longing to rush out into the garden today, but I know I have to work: editing mostly, and I need to get my high schoolers' final pieces ready for the printer. I also need to return to some sense of routine: exercise, food, walking, etc. But probably I'll find a way to snag an hour this afternoon to plant my peas, and maybe sow some lettuce and radishes too, maybe even dig in potatoes and onion sets. I am so eager to get my hands into the dirt. 

And today we will wander back to Portland.

It's been a good week--the eclipse, the rain and wind, the peepers, the meals and wine and conversation, and yesterday, finally, the hike up Flying Mountain, picking our way up a stony trail that was, in places a running stream, looking out over hazy Somes Sound, hearing the loons wail, feeling earth and water stretch beneath our shoes.

Back at the cottage I cleaned out flowerbeds while T cut down a tree that was threatening our friend's house, and then the three of us lugged logs to the woodpile, and meanwhile the crows screeched and daffodils winked in the weeds and spring is here; at long last spring has arrived.

This week my thoughts will turn toward planting peas in my own garden. This week I'll open my own windows and let the stale winter air dissipate in the breeze. This week I'll hang a first load of laundry on the lines.

In a few weeks, we'll be back on the island, briefly, for Curtis's memorial service. Sorrow and a big party and a bright wind off the sea. That feels about right.

Two days of wind and rain, and now, this morning, a limpid cloudy blue, pale as an old shirt, stains sea and sky. Last night, even as the storm tore at the cottage, I could tell that the weather was spring-softening, gusts spinning from nor'easter to westerly, and the peepers and frogs knew it too.

Tom returned from his trip, brisk and cheerful. Our friend walked down from her house, and we ate macaroni and cheese and Brussels sprouts and talked about spy novels and car-chase movies.

I did manage to finish large chunks of various jobs yesterday, and today I intend to do no desk work at all. Maybe we'll be able to hike, but I have my doubts. There are puddles and ponds and mud holes everywhere. The earth is a leaking sponge.

But the birds are singing after rain, and the sea ripples outside my window.

Tomorrow we go home.

The weather on Mount Desert Island has been lousy, at least for anyone who is desperate to climb a mountain. Yesterday, it rained all day--sometimes drizzle, sometimes downpour--and this morning I woke to wind whipping rain spatters against the window. Outside, fog lingers over the mudflats; sea and sky are milky pale, horizon line invisible.

I worked yesterday morning; then my friend and I went to Northeast Harbor to look at an art show in the library and eat lunch. She drove us along the edge of Somes Sound, the broad fjord that cuts into the center of the island. Under rain the ocean rocked choppily against its granite walls, back and forth, back and forth, like a massive cradle.

And then afterward, back at the cottage, I fell asleep, hard, till after 5. If I can't hike on this vacation, at least I can sleep. The shush of rain, the shush of tides, gulls crying, wind swirling in the spruce trees, tick of wood stove and gas heater . . . all of it conspires toward sleep, and I am capitulating.

Now, after waking late, I sit in the big shabby chair, drinking coffee from a cup named Ernie, watching the stove wood catch flame, listening to the endless rattle of wind. In a few minutes I'll take a shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, buckle down to work. T will be back from his journey later today. My friend and I will do something or other together after lunch. Meanwhile, there is sea and there is rain.