Last night on my way into bed I stood under the skylight that framed the near-full moon dead center in the clear night sky and the moon showered me with its glow-white for a while. It was a freshening, and afterward I slept in fits and starts waking every couple of hours with a new raft of dreams receding. I slept late then (it's Sunday) and made the morning waffles and coffee and returned to officebed to work, all the while swimming in dream elements washed all together and bobbing to the surface out of order, and dropping below it again, confusing and weird.

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Yesterday's game day was a great success. I lost badly in our first learning game of "7 Wonders" but it is the kind of game that involves building a civilization across three ages of time, and the building process is so absorbing one forgets to compete and it becomes satisfying just to experience the group efforts and support one another in commerce and so on. What is purported to be a 30-minute game took three hours as we laughed and conversed, a welcome respite from my normally silent isolated daily existence here at the Old Same Place.

I didn't work on my book yesterday, nor have I begun to yet today. I hope I don't fall out of step with it.

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I ordered a bunch of heirloom seeds last week to put in the cold frame, cold-weather things to experiment with in this bizarrely warm and snowless winter. Now I have the new J. L. Hudson paper catalog and I can't wait to dig in for some exotic goodies to start indoors now for planting out in May or June. There is no space whatever for planting-pots and trays in these cramp overstuffed quarters, but I think I'll set up my desk for a nursery table under the skylight since I never use it anyway.

Spilanthes acmella. Artemisia absinthium. Galium verum Can hardly wait.