NASHVILLE. Summer shift: bedtime slides later and later…feel the pull to hide from the relentless heat, the “greasy morning” (per MS). Yet I’m up at 6:30 and outside, watering the wilting petunias and basil that won’t grow as fast as I eat it, tearing at the relentless crabgrass, bitten by mosquitos at 7:30. Feeding the six feral kittens, then their mother, then MB, Eric, Romie (quasi feral male, male, and female, who’ve just today crept back now that Independence Day’s cargo of bottle-rockets is spent) and, inside, Jake, Elwood, Jason (feline) and Djuna (canine). Djuna runs from door to window, barking angrily at the cats that surround the house. Panic: so many too many animals. I’ve gone through 24 cans of cat food in 48 hours. Must trap mother and kittens, they must be spayed and neutered soon, now, –are they too young, can I do it this week? What if the kittens are fairies lured in by my desires? Then I must save them no matter what.

The chick-weed begins its second wave, fragile green spikes poking up from low damp ground.

I know much must be much happening in the night sky; this week Venus high in its transit blazes away like cheap animation, the moon half-waned but still bright enough to bleach the eastern quadrant. After dark I can’t stay outside more than a few minutes; mosquitos terrify me. Instead I lie curled on the couch, too lazy to fetch my astronomical maps, and speculate idly on what stars are where.