Except for eventually replacing my spring pansies with hot-weather flowers, I think I've finished my plant shopping for the year. I'll do some transplanting, and I'll keep sowing succession crops of salad greens, but I'm not buying any big-ticket shrubs or trees. I picked up a few last things as my neighbor and I wandered through nurseries and plant sales this weekend, and earlier last week I bought a raspberry plant . . . at the grocery store, of all places: a variety I've been looking for for years--compact, thornless, and non-spreading, perfect for a tiny homestead. Tom and I had a fantastic raspberry patch in Harmony, but there is no way to manage such a sprawling situation in this little garden. So finding the Glencoe berry bush was a score.

A thunderstorm came through yesterday evening, and rain must have kept falling through the night because everything is sopped again this morning. I've got my weekly housework to deal with today, and I'll go for a walk with a friend, and of course there's my manuscript to prod. For the moment I'm still mostly on employment hiatus, though I'm expecting an onslaught of new editing to show up soon, and the conference is rolling ever closer. Paperwork-wise, I'm prepped for Monson, but this week I'll start plotting out the syllabus details for my July Poetry Kitchen class.

Looking ahead at my calendar, I am already feeling a twinge of nerves about the amount of traveling I'll be doing in the fall. I know, as an introvert with a performance career, that I need to let myself keep soaking up this temporary peace. If I don't, I'll be a mess in the long run. But I've always found it hard to tamp down my guilt about my earning gaps.

So I scrub toilets and tell myself that I am contributing. Ah, the things we put ourselves through. No one else is griping at me. I can do all of the griping myself.