We haven't had a long, warm, heavy rain like this for ages, and it has been a joy. All night I woke and slept and woke and slept to downpour drumming on the shingles, spray clattering against the panes, the scent of water misting through the open window.

Now, even in this half-dark, I can see the gardens stretching and glowing. Rain clatters and drums; it shows no signs of stopping. I don't know how many inches have fallen so far, but the earth is drinking them in.

Yesterday I finished reading the Lahiri and Fowles stories and started Willa Cather's The Professor's House. I went for a walk before the rains began. I spent time with Hayden Carruth's poems; I read a friend's manuscript; I fiddled with some revisions and wrote marketing copy for the Monson programs and answered emails and chipped away at interview questions. I washed dishes as two hummingbirds visited the feeder and a pair of mockingbirds flirted on the back fence. I baked scones and went out to write with my friends. I came home to lamplight and Tom and Chuck.

My first days of summer vacation have been wordy and lonesome and spacious and friendly and rainy. It has not been difficult to revise my hours into a new sort of work. The house itself is a help--shabby and half-assed as it is, its tidy cottage sweetness coaxes me into unstructured concentration. I've talked to Teresa about this before: we're both very aware that we write best in our own rooms. Away, we flounder. At home, we make.