Well, listeners actually did come! The room was full! Some of them were people I didn't even know!  I wasn't worried about the actual reading; it was more the "throwing my own party" angle that was getting me worked up. But there were writers, and diaspora friends, and kid-raising friends . . . even my next-door neighbor. I was mightily relieved.

So now I move on to the next big thing on the schedule: getting the boy back to college. We head for Vermont tomorrow, and I'll chug home on Sunday evening--a whirlwind of driving and hauling, with an overnight pit-stop to check in on my parents. So you may not hear from me for a couple of days.

Book launch for Chestnut Ridge, tonight, 7 p.m., Longfellow Books in downtown Portland. I'm excited to say that at least 6 people have told me they will be there. So the room will not be empty.

This morning I'll start cooking down some tomatoes for sauce, and then I'll turn my thoughts to planning my reading. I guess I mostly know what I'll be doing, but probably I'll expand a bit upon the usual, given that this event is all about CR.

Last night we had a long beautiful rainstorm--hours and hours of downpour. Now everything is bowed and sopped, and the cool air is full of water. If I weren't wearing this bathrobe eyesore, I'd be out there now, admiring it all.

Maybe I'll see you tonight?

Late yesterday afternoon the boy and I met a diaspora friend for a walk around Back Cove, and then drove home through a snarl of traffic to discover an ambulance and blue-lighted police cars clogging the road in front of our house. My first panic was: I burned the house down! My second was: Tom's had an accident! Neither of those things turned out to be the case. Instead, before our eyes, one of my neighbors was being taken away in handcuffs.

Needless to say, this was unsettling, and sad, and we fretted about it for much of the evening. Of course I have no idea what he was charged with, though I can speculate. The complications of the human character are many and few.

Later, after the visible drama had ended, we ate beef stew with foraged puffball, garden peppers and carrots, and herbs; parslied potatoes; a big platter of home-grown tomato slices topped with basil and fried okra; quick cucumber and shallot pickles; and a lime cream tart. We had pleasant conversation, Tom washed dishes, Paul and I played Yahtzee, the whole scene was absurdly nice, and I couldn't stop thinking about my neighbor being hauled off to jail, and how un-nice things were fifty feet away from my front door.

Another cold morning, and the nights are creeping in as well. Sky and light are autumn; cicadas shriek their love; birds fatten for travel. If I were back in the woods, I'd be getting ready for the Harmony Fair.

Instead, I am prepping for a reading, planning a giant boy-filling stew, inventing a dessert (puff pastry filled with lime-scented creme patisserie), trying to finish an exhausting editing project, frying a big fat fresh puffball foraged from my own yard (!), harvesting tomatoes peppers eggplant kohlrabi okra cucumbers greens lettuces herbs, walking on sidewalks, listening to helicopters, washing sheets, chatting to my neighbors, looking under shrubs for the cat, ordering excellent Chinese food, living in a house with two bathrooms, a furnace, and garbage pickup, mooning about words, going out in the evenings to listen to bands from other continents, reading the same books I've been reading for 40 years, trying to hang onto and branch out.

It's 50 degrees here--by far our coldest morning since June. I think the weather won't stay so chilly, but the shift does feel sudden, and I am glad to have our wood in and our chimney clean.

I froze tomato sauce yesterday, then refilled the blue bowl with another picking. Tomatoes do feel like wealth to me. I was such a bad tomato farmer for so many years.

So today: back to desk work. My book launch is Thursday. I take the college boy to Vermont on Saturday. I need to find a book to read. We're having tomatoes for dinner.

If you're in town I'd be so happy to see you at the Thursday reading: Longfellow Books, downtown Portland, 7 p.m.

After so much heat and sogginess, we suddenly have the kiss of fall. On such days a vegetable farmer's mind turns to thoughts of harvest. I spent much of yesterday cutting, washing, and freezing chard; collecting tomatoes for today's sauce; cleaning and storing cured garlic and shallots. I made fresh cucumber and shallot pickles; I fried eggplant and okra; I composed a giant Caprese platter of tomatoes, mozzarella, and purple and green basil.

We listened to three different baseball games on the radio (the boy doesn't know the meaning of baseball overkill); went for a walk in the Falmouth Audubon preserve; played some Yahtzee and Scrabble (the boy beat me by 100 points). The boy made hamburger buns and Tom grilled hamburgers.

Meanwhile, in the air I smelled other people's breakfasts, and other people's laundry, and other people's cars. This made me sad, and homesick for my land, in a way I've mostly been able to shunt aside for the past year.

I don't live there anymore.

I'm feeling much more rested this morning. And the heat finally broke, so the air is cool and dry, and the sun is shining, the sky is clean and blue, birds are cooing and chattering and clacking and cheeping, and the day altogether promises delight.

I don't know what we'll do today. It's the boy's last weekend at home, so he may have an idea. Or he may not. The grass does need mowing; the house, as always, needs re-sprucing. But I'd be happy to go for a long walk instead. So far this week I've taken a 4-miler around Back Cove and a 3-miler to Hadlock Field, and with the weather so sweet, I'm ready for more.

I'm also ready to take an editing breather. My current project is complicated and demanding and very, very slow, and I'm looking forward to not thinking at all about endnotes for two days. Next week at this time I'll be on the road to Vermont, college senior in tow. Next year at this time I'll have zero children in school. What a strange notion.