The forecast is rain. Frank is gone when I wake and I am not in any hurry. Except this is the day the seedlings must go into the ground. Frank comes home and wants to get the gardening done, and so we go out into the cool and damp morning. A nice breeze, but no sun. Zucchini and yellow squash rows, two of them. Boxes for lots of tomatoes, cherry and early girl and hybrid. Boxes for eggplant, boxes for cucumber, boxes for pole beans. I plant them all; Frank stakes the tomatoes and makes climbers for the beans. A drop of rain here and there. It’s coming soon. We think about the special one, not here with us today, who will come tomorrow and find the garden planted. My friend calls and we connect from across the country, coast to coast, while I water all the seedlings. Sprinkling from hose and sky. The planting done, I walk and talk, passing my friend the mallard on his brook swim. Once I am home it rains very heavily. I have housework and then a long, long lovely nap with the door open to the yard and I sleep so contentedly with the pouring rain and the vegetables in the earth, as if I can feel them settling into their new habitat, feeling the rain pooling on their roots; their energy is green and hopeful. Quite a drenching, quite a resting.