Yesterday was downright springlike--50 degrees, a warmish breeze--and I spent much of the morning raking garden beds, pruning stalks, tidying my new leaf-mulch pile, picking gravel out of soil, and suchlike early-spring tasks. I set up the little cafe table and chairs in the lane, and even sat there for 10 minutes, until idleness made me cold. And then later T and I went for a walk along the cove, and in the evening we drove into town for a good dinner out with our neighbor. It was altogether a brisk and desk-free day, a day for stretching out those gardening muscles in the backs of my legs, a day for dirty fingernails and muddy old sneakers.

The rain will be back today, but the temperature has stayed warmish, and the uncovered beds will drink in the the gift. Yellowy spikes will green, red spikes will unfold, buds will swell, wretched maple seedlings will erupt in the millions. I'm sure I'll be wandering around outside in my raincoat, drinking it all in.

Otherwise, the day will toddle on. I've got to deal with the grocery shopping I never managed to do on Friday. I've got contest reading to finish, and I need to tidy my study for the coming week--a couple of small manuscript jobs ahead, a reading on Tuesday to plan. T and I have been working out the details of our April getaway week--how to fit our biannual trip to the cottage on Mount Desert Island around my workday in Monson, which also just happens to bump up against eclipse day. The Monson folks have invited us both to spend an extra night up there so that we'll be in place for the event. Central and northern Maine are in a fever about being in the path of the eclipse, and there will be tons of hoohah. It will be fun to witness.

One thing I will not be doing today is paying attention to Saint Patrick's Day, which has always just seemed silly to me--an excuse for loud guys to get day-drunk, an excuse for cooks to boil foods that taste better when they're not boiled. Last year I was in Chicago on Saint Patrick's Day and got to witness the hideous tradition of dying the Chicago River green, which pretty much put the lid on the holiday for me. Blech. But if day-drinking, cabbage-boiling, and green rivers are your pleasures, I hope you have much fun today.