Darling love, a gorgeous day, sunny and dry, not too hot. How do you like my "cut-leave" coneflower (rudbeckia)? It's over 7 feet tall, reminding me of Jack and the Beanstalk. We planted a third one this year, in the middle between the existing two, but for this season it was getting too much shade from the spirea in front. Next year I'm sure it will be as tall as its companions.

Listening to radio, dinner production is behind me - a big pot of Sicilian chicken is on the stove. Found out the hard way that the dishwasher died. Of course it was fully loaded and set to go and - pffffft - nothing. So I spent an hour at the sink washing everything by hand, Glenn Close in Damages doing her dragon lady thing on the little kitchen TV behind me. Marcia Gay Harden's in it too this season, she plays a "woman of a certain age" vamp, very sexual, all plunging silk blouse necklines, stockings with garters, and aggressive sexuality of an expensive, professional high-achiever type. May I say - so not me? Not that I wouldn't mind getting dressed up in an elegantly prowlish outfit. She has quite a form, a couple of episodes back showcased to spectacular effect in a tightfitting (yet ever so classy) linen sheath dress. My form is pretty good these days too - though not to her level, not one that would remind anyone of Hemingway's description of Brett in The Sun Also Rises. Brett was damned good-looking... She was built with curves like the hull of a racing yacht, and you missed none of it with that wool jersey.

I'm 50 and 11/12ths, in my prime and then some, but not a Mrs. Robinson type, though it would be fun to deck myself out like that as a lark. Well, who knows, perhaps a deeply buried vamp would come out. I wouldn't be surprised.

What style am I? I don't know offhand who to compare myself to - but certainly more natural, less studied/made-up/constructed than a predatory femme fatale.

Enough about me. I'm Evil, Evil Kneivel, for my girl.... Cute song lyric just now, a young man liltingly croons, accompanied by the strumming of what might be a ukelele. (I check the KZE playlist - Tift Merritt w/Zeke Hutchens).

Darling, how in the world are you?

Now a Springsteen song is on. I saw him in concert a couple of times probably about 10 or more years back now. And saw him close up at an after party too, in some Jersey venue (some coliseum named after a former governor? a corporation? who knows now) at which I also saw the charming doe-eyed actress Heather Graham who was dating the sardonically-persona'd Ed Burns at the time and I said some silly fan-type thing to Burns who gave me a once-over bored smirk.

The room was very crowded, after the concert with afterparty invitees getting drinks before the Boss might arrive. Which he did in that crowded room and I did see him pretty close up. I can conjure the image now, or my reaction to seeing him. To me he looked like a walking Rembrandt painting. Is he Dutch, or Flemish? Because somehow just the way the light fell on him... he wasn't tall, but his features were just so thrown into relief, pale luminous skin, dark hair -- he glowed like a Rembrandt. I was taken aback by that. At that moment, several glasses of wine in me for sure, I wasn't grasping for an art-history analogy. But there you go. He has a certain compact, self-possessed presence - at least at an afterparty. Because in concert - of course he puts himself out there.

Feel free to cast a bored indulgent look at your iphone, darling. You know - come to think of it - I always found Burns pretty cute even if I didn't always love his film persona. But darling - you sort of look like him.

I don't look anything like Heather Graham, as you well know. But those two broke up a million years ago. Now he's with... Christy Turlington. Oh never mind.

So many smiles and kisses for you darling - love you.