Hello darling, I wonder where you are and hope all is well with you (kisses). Up in the aerie, wearing jeans and a top - it's quite cool and gray today, shades of fall, and now light rain. Took the eggplant I roasted the other day and made a big bowl of baba ghanoush, a purée seasoned with tahini, garlic, extra virgin olive oil, and fresh lemon juice, to which I added quartered cherry tomatoes from a stand down the road, parsley from a raised bed here, and minced red onion. Put in a disc of True Blood to watch while slicing peaches, but have completely lost interest in the series so inserted a DVD of You Can Count on Me, with Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo. It's filmed in the Catskills, so the views are so familiar to me, and it's just a wonderful movie - over the years I've easily seen it a dozen times and it's fresh every time. Wonderful Matthew Broderick too, playing a complete asshole of a boss. Enjoyed the movie while slicing a big box of peaches - maybe 50 or more pieces of fruit - that was $5 at the farmstand yesterday. I froze most of it in big baggies - this winter there will be peach pie and peach crostata and stewed peaches to have with morning oatmeal. I am like a squirrel socking away produce, but it's so worthwhile - fresh, local, and very economical. Produce is inexpensive now - but supermarket peppers in January? Often $4/lb. or more. Now I'm buying entire cartons for a few dollars.

I am feeling like quite the hausfrau today, what with food prep and the neighbor's chickens spending so much time in our garden. They crack me up. They flock together and cluck nonstop as if commenting on their surroundings or a tasty bug. They're quite beautiful. I snapped a picture today - not a very good one. I hope to have very beautiful photos in the near future - D gave me a Nikon digital camera for my birthday. It's teeny. I don't know how to use it yet, and it needs batteries and programming and - well, I'm very grateful that D will figure it out and explain the basics to me - which is all I ever wish to know with sophisticated technology. Point and click. 

Wonderful chance encounters with wildlife over the last several days. At the conservation area, in a wooded path, a young stag (the beginnings of antlers) stood on the side and regarded me and I spoke to it and it stood and listened - and it was strange - I almost had the feeling it was checking me out! Too many Greek myths. Or maybe it's that time of year for them. Another day, on a different wooded path, I virtually skidded to a halt when I saw a long, thin, black and yellow snake motionless on the path. I gasped audibly and the snake slithered away - quite a remarkable sight, all moving S-curves, sort of sexy, reminded me of Gwynnie's sashaying. The snake sashayed into the shrubbery. I laughed - who was more startled, I of it, or it of me? Then, here at the house, there are the funny brown chickens, and also a Zulu warrior of an amazing large spider that's strung up an invisible (but present) web in the perennial border that fronts the porch. I see it when I water the garden. I posted an image of the very same type of spider several years ago in my old blog - let me see if I can dig out that image and post it.

Darling, now the rain is coming down in earnest and if Ruth Reichl in her tweet this morning reported that the air was still with not a leaf moving - I look out the window now and see not the pines but that the ash and maple are dancing.

I hope all is well with you and that your journey is as smooth as it could possibly be, with every connection going just right. (Many years ago, when I traveled quite a lot for work, once or twice I endured horrible weather-related delays, a whole overnight once spent in an airport, due to a blizzard somewhere that messed up the whole system.)

Anyway, it's August so that shouldn't be an issue. But I can imagine that at this point you'd like to be beamed back, but no, one must go through the process, unless one is, say, in Air Force One, one of the perks for sure of being President. Oh well, anyway, I am thinking of you and loving you, and if you have to camp out for 23 minutes while they board whoever first - well, let me put an arm around you, give you a kiss you on the cheek, and see if you'd like anything else, say a sip of rosé. Oh I know, you're probably pretty grizzly, in need of a hot shower, haircut and a shave, maybe not so much in the mood for smiles. I don't mind, darling, I love you anyway. Well I myself have gotten too warm and have pinned my hair up and popped my top. Now there's a beautiful ambient sound of steady rain and the gray gloaming. So very many kisses, my darling love. Godspeed, adieu.