Notes from this afternoon...
Dearest love, I am sitting at a picnic table in a grove of honey locusts at the conservation area. A train sounds in the distance and around me birds twitter invisibly in the trees. I've brought a glass of ice water, readers, bug spray if I need it, and I'm wearing my pretty skirt outfit. It's very sultry out. A few minutes ago a brief shower pelted the car as I drove down Route 9 to get here. Now a faint breeze feels cool on my bare arms.

I came here for a walk this morning and was delighted to notice raspberries growing wild along the path. I took photos but they came out so dark it looks as though I was out wild-orchid hunting at night.

So still and peaceful here. I hear the tu tu tu of a cardinal. Now I hear voices, a father and daughter. They have the audacity to sit at my table. What a breach of decorum! Oh. They've just gotten up. (In fairness, they were here first when I arrived, so I went to the other, more secluded table. They left so I took their place. Maybe they feel they still have a claim, a trace haunting. Whatever - it's all very friendly and peaceable. I'm glad they sat down. Sweet.) The girl has a few wildflowers she's put in a soda cup. She smiles at me and I smile back. I wonder if she knows the names of the blooms. Queen Anne's Lace, I see, and wild aster.

I got a little spoiled blogging from Brooklyn. There was so much new input it wasn't hard to come up with posts. Now that I'm back, and perhaps particularly with this enervating weather, I'm like - what am I going to write? That I just feel like napping - another reason I've taken myself out with my notebook. That I bought a farmstand cabbage yesterday and am trying to inspire myself to make cole slaw. That I seem to have a new reader and wonder who it might be, if we're acquainted. That it makes me very happy when I see "United States" on the pageload activity. I kiss my index finger and touch the screen. I'm happy to see Hudson there now too - benevolent, I sense, unlike the last one.

The Catskills ridge reclines in a smokey, dimmed silhouette. A gnat circles about my face. My pen is running out of ink. Dinner will be grilled chicken. Honey locusts, grouped and tall here, are lovely trees. I think of fractals, feather-shaped individual leaves arrayed along twigs, branches displaying graceful fans against the pale sky. There are plenty of young specimens, but I have my eye on the handsome mature one right in front of me, the one with the most luxuriant bark, gray, thick, and ropey, deep intertwined furrows I want to run my hands up and down all over. Beautiful thick trunk. I want to reach my arms around, press, feel it hard against me, look up into it, close my eyes, worship and adore...

I felt unusually amorous earlier and exhausted at the same time. I was on my way to the library but went home instead and lay down and imagined you and did something about it and dozed off and then got back up and drove to the library. A dollar covered an overdue fine and the recent fiction issue of The New Yorker. I wonder where in Europe you'll be. I wonder how your summer is going. I think of you. I cup my chin in my hand and look at the mountains.

Let me see if I can get better shots of the berries. Loving you so, darling.