Steve from the garage called mid-morning and, as always, I gritted my teeth as I picked up the phone. My poor car has been under the knife a lot this year, and I assumed Steve was gearing up to share the bad news about yet another costly repair. But no! He was calling to say that he couldn't find anything wrong, and there would be no charge, and he was leaving the key in the visor.

So the auto gods nodded kindly on me yesterday, but the veterinary charms have been mixed. Poor Ruckus is healing well, abscess-wise, but now he's caught a cold and is snuffling and sneezing and behaving exactly like a human who wants to spend all day in bed watching bad television. Still, he keeps to his habits, following me outside when I do my chores, tucking himself into a leaf pile beside the clotheslines as I pin up shirts, lolling on a paving stone as I lug shrubs from one hole to another. He loves to watch me toil.

Yesterday I moved a rosebush to the backdoor bed, then planted a nannyberry viburnum in a dark backyard corner, a running serviceberry between the driveways, and a flowering almond by the street. Fingers crossed that they all survive, but it's been a good spring for transplanting: plenty of rain, not too much sudden heat. I also finally got my peas in, and tomorrow the new soil for the boxes arrives, so I'll be able to plant spring greens as well. For dinner last night I harvested a mess of ramps, very exciting as they are finally beginning to naturalize, and we ate them with lemon-marinated chicken, baked polenta, asparagus in ginger butter, and a green salad. 

Of course I was at my desk too: the day wasn't all wind and soil. I'm juggling a passel of editing projects at various levels of completion, but today I should pluck at least one out of my hair and toss it back to the press. And I'll get onto my mat too; maybe dig into some notebook scribbles and see if I want to play with any of them; maybe work on class planning or maybe procrastinate on that for a day or two . . . 

In the meantime the neighborhood glistens under a film of rain.