I Think of You

Hi darling. A hard, pounding rain broke out a couple of hours ago. I wanted to capture it for you. I love a good summer rain. You can't tell from this picture, except for maybe gauzy spots, but it was an abundant, bursting, sensuous monsoon pour. Cats wanted in. I took the picture from the sheltered porch. It's of the kitchen garden, which mostly D tends though I water it. Vegetables grow in the four square raised beds, there's a rose border in front, and within the rabbit fencing a raspberry bush that I got at a discount grocer a couple of years ago for $1.99 is thriving, along with straggly and more expensive blueberry bushes to the right. The raspberry bush produces and in the past I've picked berries from it, two or three for the bowl, one for me. For this suburban/urban transplant, it feels like an amazing achievement to grow my own especially considering how expensive they are even in season. In the past the blueberry bushes - varietals that ripen at staggered times over a long season - have produced too. But mostly the birds get them first because while D & I talk a lot about netting this against birds and that against deer, somehow it doesn't get done.

It was cold, damp sweater weather much of the day. But now the sun has broken out and it's instantly summery again. I've peeled off my sweater and opened the windows.

What did I do today? Went for a walk at the conservation area. It's buggy there. Ran into a regular, the older gentleman with his floppy dog. He remarked on the bugs. I concurred. "But I hate the odor of bug spray," I said. He said that he puts it on just where he perspires, indicating his neck and wrists. "It's no Miss Dior," I said. We continued on our separate ways.

Spent time in the kitchen (Season 3 DVD of Big Love on in the background), baked chocolate chip cookies, made blue-cheese yogurt dressing, washed and spun lettuce, pulled out chickens to defrost, loaded the dishwasher and ran it. Upstairs I ironed a few more curtains.

Now I hear a noisy small plane, reminding me of when I lived in Brooklyn and helicopters constantly crossed overhead. Once I saw one from the terrace that I knew must contain the Pope! We lived by a LaGuardia flight path too, so jets were always sailing past, stately slow and silent, fronts up at a slight tilt.

One day I sat on the terrace, feet up. I closed my eyes for a while and when I opened them again and looked up at the sky at that very moment a large water bird, a heron or egret, flew overhead. How serendipitous - that precise moment. I don't believe I've ever seen another one in Brooklyn, not right in the old neighborhood anyway.

I was so glad to get your lantern flicker this morning, I felt immeasurably lightened.

Dinner is cheese tortellini with homemade basil pesto (one of my favorite things), leftover chicken, and salad. I should go to the supermarket tomorrow - I'm running out of basics. Let's see: Worcestershire, OJ, walnuts, butter, feta, camembert... A jaunt out to Old Chatham for cheese might be in order.

A John Gorka song is on now. I think of you, all night long... summer sky... climbing roses... watched the sea... memory... you're on my mind the whole night through... all the way in a lonesome city all the time you're gone I think of you. And when I hear the soft wind blowing like an angel's voice from a far off shore..... I think of you as the night goes by you're on my mind the whole night through... all the time you're gone... I think of you all the time you're gone... I think of you, I think of you....