According to the date I seem to have missed yesterday but I haven't, not yet. It's the middle of the night, halfway between yesterday and tomorrow, but I suppose I'll have to write two for today's date. So - yesterday was busy. I finally did my planting and my fingernails are ringed with mud because I didn't wear garden gloves, sort of on purpose. I remember Scarlett O'Hara ("Scarlett O'Hara, yo' hands is like a field hand's." "I am a field hand.") That doesn't happen often. I have a writer's hands, and feet. I also have a writer's spread (like a secretary's, sorry - personal assistant's - only broader. I'm not good at gardening but I'm better than I was. I used to have a withering thumb. Given water, sunshine and fertilizer, the plants I touch begrudgingly forgive me. What else did I do? I re-read a lot of material pertaining to a play of mine that I have to fine-fine-tune very carefully. I'm trying to stuff enough key words into my head to let them simmer and come up with something I can use. I have to leave it now. I am preparing to go away for a week to finish a book. I hope the plants survive without me....

More to do today: I have to plant the back forty. The weather has been too nasty to plant the dear little (expensive) green things I bought last weekend and I have to put them into a nurturing environment now that a little warmth is creeping in, up and around. I don't have a green thumb or any remotely encouraging digital and I have to remind myself daily at all times of year to remember to water the living things in my care. It's a daily surprise and an assault on the psyche. You'd think after all this time it would come as no surprise. Not so. I've said this before or a variation on the theme, that everything is so daily, and I cannot get used to it. I startle easily, too. I get so deeply engrossed in my own thoughts I sort of forget where I am and when someone speaks or a door closes or or or - anything happens to jar me out of my reverie, I startle, always with a start, usually with a shriek - a soft one. On our honeymoon, we had checked in to a hotel room and Bill used the bathroom first. Minutes, nay, seconds later, he came out, saying something, and I screamed. "Who were you expecting?" he asked. I guess it's the same with the plants. They're quiet, but they do startle me. The most startling thing is that they grow. I hope so.