I feel a little bit good this week - coolheaded, quiet, considered. It was so hot this weekend - I saw the blackberry blossoms foaming up white around the edges of the woods and told them out loud, "some blackberry winter, huh?" And then here I am, two days later, trying to warm up my cold fingers around the ceramic of my little coffee mug. 51 outside, 62 in the house. I bet the blackberries are still blooming out there on the shoulders of the Middle River, a river I slipped fully underneath this weekend, whose specific bacteria is even now likely festering in the small scrap at the center of my right palm. (Destiny line.)

Outside, the rain pouring out of my busted up gutter beats down into the exact spot in my garden that it always does, smoothing away all the soil I built back up there. The little stray cat is screaming. The catbird and the blue jay are sparring with each other over the feeder, and the crows all look so bedraggled, like old men in black coats at funerals.

Garden things are going slow. I'm disappointed that my extra push for an insane amount of sunflowers has come to almost nothing. It seems like nothing wants to sprout this year. The ones that did managed to come up look anemic. I wanted to get my tomatoes yesterday but they were sold out, a big mess from the nice weekend and the aftermath of mother's day. I'll need to go to a second option sometime this week. But I did buy delphinium and 5 different kinds of basil. Hot peppers, zinnia, a few fancier sorts of black-eyed-susans to replace the ones that didn't come back.