. . . I ask for help planting a hydrangea in the backyard where there was once a blank patch of soil and weeds. It’s a snowball, the tag promising large white globes of flowers. The heat wilts the bush to the ground every afternoon. I do not water it. Rain comes most early evenings and lifts the leaves. I watch the plant from the window with interest. It’s supposed to bloom late, in the early fall, but I wonder if it will at all. It can be difficult to thrive even under the best of circumstances, which it never is. I’m trying to rest but I’m not teaching in these months so I try to write more but it’s going slowly because I am so tired. I make small calendars on giant yellow Post-Its. Three days OFF, I write to myself but it sounds more like a threat than a promise.