Wednesday, June 25th

WHAT A TANGLE I’m in of flowers and people and letters and life in general! How shall I ever get sorted out and back to work again? But I was vastly cheered by Elizabeth McGreal who said when she was here the other day with Nicky, Tamas’ sister, that she did not try to work in the summer. I do try because writing is the thread of continuity under the tumultuous days.

The cool came in the night. Tamas, after a supine day yesterday, panting in his nest under the hedge, was so full of beans he insisted on going out at five when Bramble came in. I should have gotten up then and watered the garden, but went back to sleep. Now I have two hoses going in different places, and will move them when I go for the mail. I picked off dead heads of peonies and lupine, and redid the bunches in the house. The roses are just beginning.

I got up here to my desk at nine and it is now half past ten. I have written a blurb for a rather charming first novel Eric sent me, Harriet Hahn’s The Plantain Season. She does what has seemed to me nearly impossible—write convincingly and touchingly as well as humorously about a young woman’s first sexual experiences.

Yesterday I achieved nothing except to order iris and tulips—the start of the fall orders. It is a perfect hot-weather occupation, as I get so excited I forget everything and am in bliss. Mary Tozer is here at Dockside and came for a drink before we had dinner over there, and I’ll see her again tonight. A friend who stays near by, but not here, is a good friend indeed! With any guest in the house I cannot feel myself and am constantly on the qui vive. I hope I am thoughtful about people’s needs and comfort, but it is often at the price of composure, and in a short time I begin to feel irritable, as if all my energy were drained out in nonproductive channels. What guests actually want of me is just the real person, not the cook, chauffeur, provider of drinks, and so on.

Polly seemed quite surprised that I have so little time for work, even at best, and have to battle for it every day. She told me that Molly Howe entertains a lot and still gets a lot of work done and my spirits sank, until she let fall that Molly now has (in Ireland) a cook, chauffeur, and gardener! I lead a multiple life because I like it and I wouldn’t want a cook even if I could afford one. But in summer it means I am on my feet for five or six hours a day because of the garden and maintaining everything—laundry has to be done, food brought in, the everlasting letters answered. I run all day except when I have a long rest in the afternoon. That quiets me down.

I have learned in these last years to forget the desk and everything on it as soon as I leave this room. The key to being centered seems to be for me to do each thing with absolute concentration, to garden as though that were the essential, then to write in the same way, to meet my friends, perfectly open to what they bring. And most of the time that is how it is.

Lately I have ended the day with half an hour on the terrace, when the light is beautiful, and the birds fly past, one at a time, always from north to south—robins, the catbird, kingbirds, finches. Why do they all take the same route in the evening? I lie there tremendously awake, and watch it all, and it is heaven.