Hello darling, what a gorgeous day today, blue skies, white clouds, green pastures and trees all around, spectacular. Back from doing an hour's volunteering at the CSA, a couple of hours per season required of each member. I just stood in the doorway of the barn and if people had questions about how to pick up their share of produce, I filled them in - look at the blackboard, go around the bins, you'll need a few tote bags. I was happy to get a question I readily knew an answer to. A woman having clipped mint from the herb garden, asked if she should store it in the fridge. I told her that I picked some last year and placed sprigs in a glass of drinking water, they took root, I planted them in a pot, and they grow on my windowsill to this day. She seemed delighted to learn this and said she would do the same. I had fun. As reclusive a life as I have these days (years), I'm actually pretty sociable. I enjoyed standing in the doorway "looking pretty." Another woman had asked me (with her duty coming up sometime) - is that all you have to do, stand there and look pretty? I laughed and said I had put on a skirt for that very reason!

And I have a nice haul of produce for the week now to play with, a quart of strawberries, kale, a round cabbage, summer squash & zucchini, carrots, snow peas, scallions, parsley, basil, and thyme from the garden, for the next roast chicken.

It was so beautiful to be there, just hang out greeting people, everyone so friendly and all smiles, in the pleasant shaded barn fragrant with bins of fresh basil. And there was a cute baby girl who beamed at me and pointed at her feet - "her new shoes," her mommy told me. Very pretty. And I directed people to the herb garden - it's beneath the red maple over yonder (no, I didn't say yonder, I just pointed) - and handed them scissors. And enjoyed the breezes that wafted through, and the occasional chicken that wandered by, and the farmer-woman, very beautiful supremely healthy looking statuesque blonde, who unloaded bins into the barn, chalked instructions on the blackboard, expertly handled loading empty bins onto the lift of the back of her truck, sealed the truck up and mechanically put away the lift, drove away, and wherever she'd gone, later (all within an hour) cheerfully steered a big ole tractor up the drive. Phew! Talk about high-energy. I was quite content to stand there and look pretty and be as helpful as possible. I recognized someone who came in as I was leaving, an attorney I was tangentially acquainted with from about 15 years ago now (incredible that it's so long) when I worked for a city agency that had to do with assigning criminal defense attorneys to the indigent accused. I recognized her immediately and stated her name, and the women I had worked for (lovely bosses, I really enjoyed working with them, unlike what happened with me later, when I went into urban planning) whom I know she knows very well. She vaguely remembered my name. Maybe I look different now, certainly my hair is longer. Some fifteen years have past - but she looked exactly the same, brisk, rumpled & cheerful as ever. Amazing. So what do you do now up here?, she asked. Write poetry, I replied. A bit of a stretch, but I was making a long story short. That's a whole lot better than the Assigned Counsel Plan!, she retorted. I paid my dues, I replied.

Okay, it's arguable that I write poetry, but whatever - well, sometimes. What does it matter, it doesn't. I was going to go straight home afterward, looking forward to communing with you, but I was so near the little town library that I stopped there first, and while standing at the checkout desk in the cozy room, I scribbled a note to the head librarian, asking if she or another library in the system might consider ordering a particular book.

And that's it for now, darling, more or less. In miscellaneous news I find it remarkable that I referred in my blog to Mark Halperin as - a certain word I won't repeat - and two or three days later he's suspended from his network for uttering a variant with reference to POTUS. Keep it up!, said D admiringly, when I mentioned the coincidence. And I picked up neighbor's share at the CSA for her today, I was there anyway of course - but D says she didn't know that - but she says that she's been very sick to her stomach the last few days after having a dream about Michele B. You'd think that neighbor & I would get along better given that we both have visceral negative reactions towards her.

I'm almost done with the Wallis Simpson/Maitre Suzanne Blum book, and this morning I realized what reading of the strangely symbiotic relationship reminds me of. Have you ever seen the Hitchcock film, Rebecca, starring Joan Fontaine, Laurence Olivier, and Judith Anderson as the fanatical and malevolent Mrs. Danvers? Darling, if you haven't, I highly recommend it. Though perhaps one needs to be in the mood for it. It's one of my all-time favorite movies, yet in part because I have wonderful associations of having seen it for the first time in a cozily social setting, projected on a screen in a comfortably if shabbily furnished large living room in a venerable dorm, Lanz-gowned, furiously knitting future Movers & Shakers in attendance, as I lay on the carpet in flickering darkness entirely rapt in the excruciatingly romantic saga... Darling, I do recommend it...

I should run now, put away all the produce, see what else needs doing. I'm still wearing my skirt, as I sit here typing and sipping from my pink icefilled glass - the glass itself is pink, as is the wine, as was that adorable baby girl's tiny shoes, also pink, and her pink outfit. (Mine's dark blue.)

So reluctant to let you go, darling, you are so much on my mind, and today earlier, so effectively, mercifully, incredibly.

Mercifully incredibly. Do I need that Oxford comma or not? I don't know, it works well for me either way.

Loving you very much darling. I hope you're having a fine afternoon too, filled with all sorts of beautiful and wonderful and loving sensations, wild strawberries, and wild kisses. XOXO