It was a crazy work Sunday but much was accomplished. I packed and canned five jars of dill beans, boiled and strained a pot full of tomatoes and peppers into sauce, froze sauce, froze the stray beans that didn't fit into jars, cleaned bathrooms, marinated and roasted lamb, made tabbouleh, read the "East Coker" section of Four Quartets, finished Penelope Fitzgerald's Offshore, mowed grass, grocery-shopped, washed piles of dishes . . . I'm sure I'm forgetting something because the day went on and on like that.

But now I've got my five beautiful jars to admire, the first canning I've done for several years. The beans are so pretty, floating in their seeds and and brine. I arrange them on the shelf; then open the freezer to admire the boxes of sauce, the neat packages of beans and kale and corn and peas; now wander into the basement to gloat over the stack of dry firewood. What I have is homesteader hubris, a common ailment of late summer--the self-congratulatory glory of the winter stockpiler.

Today I'll go back to my editing desk, and I'll finish the housework I couldn't do while T was filling the air with sawdust and shavings, and I'll talk to Teresa about T. S. Eliot, and the day will simmer down into its own version of sauce. On Wednesday the Brooklyn boy will be arriving for a week's cheerful disruption, so I need to pound out the pages while I can.