Dusk has been nigh since dawn, the sun never came out, just brooding skies all day, seeming to worry neighbor's hens that hang out in our driveway and yard. They fret and cluck nervously, the most pointlessly skittish creatures I've ever encountered, at any moment - such as when I poke my head out the back door - given to freezing in place with wary unblinking sideways looks followed by under-breath mutterings that sound to me invariably like chicken for "I don't know, I don't like the look of that", which if any of the brood agrees, which it inevitably does, off they scamper, into unmowed wilds, a mere few feet away, ridiculously on two legs. (You know, bipedal humans are more graceful in that regard.) Today I saw them shaking out their feathers with revulsion at light scattered rain that had the affrontery to dampen their feathers throughout the day.

Perhaps those chickens wish to climb up and get into your treehouse, darling, against the dampness, I don't know where they stand on falling temperatures - it's supposed to drop to around 40 tonight. I'm coming down, unless your treehouse has central heat or a fireplace or pellet stove - well, no, none of that yet, not in mid-September. Maybe we can just find a more sheltered area, say, the back of your truck, roll up windows, roll out blankets. Ah, but it's too early in the day for that - still dusk, perpetually, til official sunset at 7:05 tonight.

It's funny, I've had occasion to dash off a little "roast"-type note on the occasion of someone's major birthday, and found that I had very little to say about her, so I riffed amusingly (I hope) on that fact. I had little to say about her - because I don't know her at all, have only been in her presence a handful of times in my life - so there was no way I could approach the subject of her head-on. It's funny, had I been called upon to write something about you - I would have had the same trouble! And yet here I am, dearest, writing to you day after day after day. Well, there is a difference, writing to you, rather than about you. Different challenge altogether. I don't think I ever wish to write about you (how could I?) - only to you, as if we were lying together in some utterly comfortable place, holding hands, comparing hands even, fitting them together, always - in either English or some other tongue - neither of us knows French, or do you? - tutoyering each other - comme il faut in heavenly private treehouses and other secret enclosed spaces designed for loving twos.

Many kisses, hope you're having a wonderful evening. Love, Belle