Went to the contra dance last night. Molly and I decided we need to make ourselves teeshirts or something that say "I'm too young for you." Normally I don't mind being mistaken for a college student, but I do get annoyed when the person doing the mistaking obviously has unsavory intentions. Most of the men at the dances are perfectly fine, even if some of them have no sense of rythm. But what makes me fume is the one who always asks me for a dance and spends the whole time smiling in a rather unnerving way. When he asks me if I go to the local college, I always smile cheerily and tell him I'm a junior in high school. At this, he blanches and stops smiling for the rest of the dance. At the end, we bow and he goes of hurriedly to find somebody else. I always want to say, "Remember me? We went through this last February! I'm still sixteen! You're still old! Hello?!"

It's starting to feel like summer. New England was pretty in the springtime, but I get the feeling you don't see its soul until you see November or so. Likewise, you don't see Virginia's soul until you see it in June. Right now it's still cool enough that I like to go to the front yard in the afternoons with a novel and a bowl of ice cream. I lie and read until my hair is hot to the touch from the sun and the ice cream is half-liquid, the trees thick above and the bugs humming all around. That's what I like best about living here.

But Friday I actually got work done. I mowed the grass, which I like to do because I'm the only girl in the neighborhood who does. (I'm all about feminism, but I think feminism means we should do our share of the less pleasant labor, too. If you want to be treated equally, you'd better be willing to work equally. It's not all about becoming a CEO.) Then I finally got my garden planted, which I'm very satisfied with. I've got a climbing rose in one corner, a lovely creamy pale pink one. Underneath it is some Irish moss, a violet, and a lavender. On the other side are some blue morning glories, a rosemary, forget-me-nots, and a lot of red poppies. They're all the flowers that I like and my mother never wants to plant. Or, if she means to, she forgets.

April 23
May 15