It was cold and windy this afternoon, freezing temperatures, snow showers. The chickens made themselves a nest near Maria’s Studio. Strut constantly patrols around the hens, he almost never sits down and rests.

I’m looking forward to Saturday. I’ll be at Battenkill Books briefly around ll a.m. in my job as Recommender-In-Chief, then heading for the Chatham, N.Y., Public Library with Maria and Red. I’m also going to see a wonderful free-lance editor who often works with me – Rosemary Ahern – and my new agent, Christopher Schelling of Selectric Artists in N.Y. Rosemary has helped me with my last several books and has become a very valued friend. Christopher is transforming my writing life. He is helping me publish several e-books this year – the first is “Listening To Dogs,” out shortly. He’s brought me to a classy speakers bureau Blueflower Arts. Together, we are figuring out how to be a professional era in the new era. Thanks in no small measure to him, I think I might make it.

As I often remind myself, getting to be a professional writer the first time around wasn’t easy either. At 3 p.m., I’ll be speaking at the Chatham Library, talking about the meaning of animals in our lives today. It is one of the Carnegie Libraries, and has a beautiful stained glass window where I’ll speak. Sunday, I’ll be publishing another excerpt from Florence Walrath’s journals and also writing a book review of the novel “Benediction” a remarkable book. Somewhere in there Maria and I will hang up our new clothesline – we have both long wanted one, and I have trouble getting people to let me photograph their underwear, so I’ll do my own. We also have two locust trees to plant, grouting to do on the floors around the wood stove, many minor repairs and cleaning up. Sunday maybe. Sunday night I will debut a new version of my multi-grain pizza: this one with dried tomatoes, ricotta cheese, pine nuts, parsley and maybe some thinly-sliced squash. I’m starting on a new book “Black House,” the first in a triology by Scottish writer Peter May. Supposed to be a very wonderful new mystery series.