I am standing at the kitchen window, breaking open seed pods with my thumbnail. Red Russian kale pellets pop out, a dozen or so in each pod. They tumble across the counter, bumping into a wooden bowl filled with cherry tomatoes from the garden. Even through the closed window I can hear blue jays making a ruckus, yelling at each other about this new food discovery here, that predator over there, migratory plans, and greeting new and old neighbors as they join the flock. Rain drips off the edge of the roof in a steady stream. Undaunted by the damp, a male cricket gets busy with his forewings in the hopes of attracting a female for an early fall roll in the hay.

In the next room coffee is sipped, newspaper pages rustle, and the dog sighs deeply. A load of laundry churns away in the basement. The hot water heater kicks on. A breeze picks up and the sea glass wind chime tinkles from its hook by the front door. Then quiet. So quiet I can hear the click of the coffeemaker turning itself off. Then… nothing. It is a deliciously wide open blank calendar kind of day and I am holding hard and fast to the repose. Greedy for and possessive of it. It is an exquisite thing, this kind of sustained non-interruption from the outside world. A feast of nothingness in my ears and a placid waveless lake of calm in my brain.

I use an index card to gather the seeds into a pile on the counter, herding them like lemmings off the edge of the counter into an envelope for next year’s garden. Bok choy. Two kinds of kale. Onion. Black Seeded Simpson lettuce. Bouquet dill. Lavender. Without lifting my head I know it has started to rain again. Hard this time. Steady sheets batter the roof and the blueberry bushes and the wide leaves of the sunflower plants along the south side of the house. Cozy in my slippers, I silently delight in the prospect of a long day of nothing ahead.