I slept till after 6 this morning, always a delight, always rare. I am so bad at sleeping in. But today I managed to do it, and I now am lounging with coffee, and T is out and about taking pictures, and the cat is prowling around the neighborhood, and we are all three of us pleased to be where we are.

The rain held off for long enough yesterday so that T and I could get the new garden boxes set and leveled in the front yard. Maybe this afternoon I can start re-laying the stone paths between them, or maybe the earth will still be too muddy and I will be limited to standing around and admiring them. I am glad to have these boxes to work with. Though they will give me less planting room than I had before, they will simplify weeding and harvesting and increase the visual pleasures of the garden. With just the two of us to feed, I don't need to preserve every square inch of arable soil. I've watched my father fall into the trap of overplanting, and that is no way to grow old with a garden.

And then I cleaned myself up, and met my friends, and went out to my afternoon reading. When we arrived at the library, I had doubts that anyone would show: the room seemed to exude empty. But it quickly filled; we must have had forty or so listeners, which was a wonderful surprise. Because I knew I couldn't attend the protests yesterday, I'd marked a handful of political poems from Calendar and planned to talk a bit about how I've been thinking about history and personal morality. There are poems that I've rarely presented in public, and I was pleased to feel them roll off my tongue as if they belonged there. One never knows.

And now today, after that little public rush, I fall back into private life . . . washing sheets and towels, cleaning bathrooms, staring out the windows into the drizzle. I'm supposed to head to Monson tomorrow, but the weather forecast for Tuesday is terrible in the north, and I've got a sinking feeling that I may be teaching on zoom, or not at all. Spring in Maine is a cross between magical realism and getting hit in the head with a shovel.