I woke up to discover rain, fallen, about to fall. Rain in pause, rain past and future, a surprise in either case because no rain was forecast. I'm glad to see it, though, because things have been a little dry around here--not destructively so, but I've had to water the vegetable beds and consider dragging out the backyard hose.

I spent the first half of yesterday morning in the sunny vegetable garden--harvesting and then pulling out the wintered-over kale, weeding, spreading compost, cultivating, then sowing chard, second crops of arugula and cilantro, dill, fennel, kohlrabi, nasturtiums. I spent the second half in the shady backyard--weeding among the perennials and shrubs, pruning dead wood, noting what's spreading, what could be moved, what the insects have been eating, what's glowing and what's pasty-faced.

Then I changed clothes and went out to buy myself some dinner. Braving the hellscape that is tourist season on the downtown waterfront, I threaded my way onto the wharves, not running over any pedestrians, not even one. I had a hankering for soft-shell crab, but none were to be had at the fish market. For solace, I bought half a pound of picked crab--a giant treat because picked crab is not cheap. And I discovered that the fish market was also selling fresh fiddleheads!--my first of the season.

One of my eternal griefs is losing my Harmony fiddlehead patch. (Losing the chanterelle patch is another.) So when I find them for sale during their brief season, I glut myself, even if my refrigerator is full of other vegetables I ought to be using up . . . such as the pounds of baby kale that I'd just harvested. However, fiddleheads trump everything.

I had a long evening of cooking ahead of me, but first I came home to write, pulling a short draft-blurt from my notebook and carving it into rough shape, then rereading the notes I'd taken while riding the Lake Shore Limited, searching out the notes I'd taken in Monson during the eclipse. In the kitchen I pondered the draft and the notes. On the counter, the fat Bronte bio lay splayed alongside The Joy of Cooking. Barefoot, in a long summer skirt, in a sleeveless summer shirt, I puttered back and forth between the two: cooking and reading, cooking and reading . . . With the Red Sox losing in the background, I heated and cooled the base for honey-vanilla frozen yogurt. I read about Branwell working as a railway clerk in the wilds of the mountains. As the ice-cream freezer growled, I cleaned fiddleheads and roasted a tomato with fresh oregano. I mixed up a batch of mayonnaise. I read about Charlotte falling in love with the idea of Belgium. I boiled the fiddleheads and tossed them with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I assembled ingredients for crab cakes--a dab of the mayonnaise, an egg yolk, parsley and green onions, bread crumbs, seasoning. I read about Anne, lonely in her governess schoolroom; about Emily, oblivious to the press of duty, working out the rhymes for a Gondal poem. I fried up the cakes.

And then I ate, ensconced on the couch in the back room, setting aside the Brontes and entertaining myself with an episode of The Rockford Files. Crab cakes, fiddleheads, roasted tomato, a summer beer, followed by honey-vanilla frozen yogurt. A small meal on a plate, but it sure made a lot of dirty dishes.

I thought afterward about how much time I'd spent cooking for one person. I also thought about how that didn't feel weird to me, though maybe it should have. Most of the single people I know spend very little time on their own meals, even the ones who like to cook. But I think part of my bent toward concocting elaborate meals involves the ritual: cooking (often while reading) is how I make the transition from evening into night. It's not "cooking for Tom" that interests me so much as the rite of creation. Though, also, of course, I love to eat, and I love to eat with him, partly because he is such a pleasure to cook for--he notices his food, he loves to try new things, he appreciates the work that goes into a meal, both the growing and the constructing, and he says so.

As for the reading: I have always done this, ever since I was a kid and got yelled at for accidentally dripping brownie batter on library books. It's like biting my nails. I'm not quitting now.