Sunshine and Saturday morning. Somewhere a mourning dove is cooing--repeating her slow querulous demands like a mixed-up lady at a bus stop: "Where do I go, go, go?" From the living room window I am watching two squirrels skitter back and forth across the neighbor's driveway, apparently in search of nothing but trouble. Now Ruckus's pal Jack trots by, jaunty in his tuxedo, and the squirrels vamoose up a maple tree, jeering as they go. They are entirely scornful of cats.

Though I have plenty of stuff to keep me busy this weekend, there's nothing urgent. The garden is in decent shape; the housework is manageable. If it were really warm, I might wash windows, but the forecast is only for modest heat. Given that we traveled last weekend and that I'll be fetching P from school next weekend, we've made no plans to go anywhere in particular. I'll do some mowing and trimming, some weeding and cultivating. I'd like to find a celery plant for a garden box and maybe some annuals for flowerbeds. But all of this is puttering.

In the meantime, I'm still thinking about my new collection, A Month in Summer--fretting over whether it's actually done, actually cohesive; beginning to send queries to a few publishers who've previously been friendly about my work; researching contests to decide which few I might want to enter. Another collection, Dooryard, is already sitting on various editorial desks. And I have good news about Chestnut Ridge: it has a cover now, and cover blurbs, and with luck I'll have a few copies ready for sale at the Frost Place, though the formal publication date will be scheduled for early autumn. As soon as I have a jpeg of the cover, I'll share it with you.

But dealing with three manuscripts at once! No wonder my desk was such a rat-hole.