getting through the new

A very warm week, coming up! Typically by September I'm ready for crispy, brisk fall days, but this year, I'm less enthusiastic about letting go of summer. It's because of the roses. Many of them still have a period of bloom before them and yes, I have a couple more to put in -- defoliated twigs actually -- and the later that crispy brisk air sets in, the more chance there is of my catching a bloom this year. Too, I love going out with Millie in the same old shorts and a t-shirt. So quick and easy. Add a light caress from a summer wind on bare skin and I have myself a recipe for contentment. 

I cut a few blooms (short but pretty) for the breakfast table, feeling so privileged to be able to do this. Hard to accept that in winter, I'll be relegated to grocery store flowers again. [No, I absolutely cannot afford flower subscriptions, even though I love studying them online and imagining which would look best on the counter at Steffi's House. Lately, I've studied the nursery bouquets at Grace Rose Farm. Plenty of the pastels I love! So gorgeous, but of course, even if I were rich, it's hard to justify shipping fresh bouquets of flowers to your doorstep all winter long. They are beautiful but short-lived. After five days, looking at their wilted heads, you have to wonder what possessed you to do this.

I never was a rose lover. Not until this year. I liked their fragrance of course, and I did try growing a floribunda and a climber in one of my past gardens, but I never really understood them, nor did I want to treat them with kid gloves and horticultural fungus oils. And those trellises and pergolas displayed in photos of rose gardens? That was, in my limited view, for the fanatics. When I thought about roses, I mainly imagined blooms such as you find at the florist or grocery store, especially around Valentine's Day. 

But of course, that's just closed mindedness on my part. The world of rose growing has evolved, and my thinking about them thankfully has evolved as well.

 However, embarking on something new means that you have a steep learning curve, with plenty of opportunity for making costly mistakes. For example, the first roses I bought this year (a tree and a bush) came from a place that is... shady. Massive nursery stock sold cheaply. Concepts like disease resistance, own root-stock, one year old or three year old, training climbers, thorns that will kill you if you come near the stems -- zi never considered any of that. 

All this to say that following breakfast (on the porch, with a sampler of rose blooms from my garden)...

Millie and I went out to her yard and she played and I sat down on my wonderful bench and studied the roses. I located the trouble areas (leaves with black spots should be removed, spent buds should be clipped, etc), and eventually I tended to them. I also located a good spot for the next and probably last rose I want to place in Millie's Yard and dug out some of the turf and top "soil" to make room for it. But really, the most productive thing for me was the study of the roses. To look admiringly but also critically at what I planted where and what should be done about it. 

 

(look who has been hanging around my roses! straight from the lily fields of the farmette!)

 

(from the bench...)

 

Ed called while I was in the thick of rose contemplation and asked if I would go with him on a bike ride to McFarland (the town across Lake Waubesa) for a coffee/lunch at Grace Cafe there. He picked this ride deliberately because he knows how much I love it. It's not hard. Just 45 minutes each way. Not too many hills, lots of variety in the landscape...

And at the end, we have the coffee shop.

The outing feels exhilarating and at the same time intimate. The wind going there is on our backs -- a stiff breeze that has the windsurfers flying across the lake...

 

 

 

Biking with Ed across the mile long bridge is always joyful. 

At the coffee shop, we often sit and read -- I always bring my book with me -- but today we talk. Inevitably, we turn to the subject of my sick friend, but after a half hour of updates and speculations, he suggests we put it to rest. We talk about the Ukraine war instead, which is ofcourse even more depressing, but we take it from the angle of technological innovation -- something that allows us not to focus for just a minute not on the horrors of that war, but instead, on the way that despite everything, the Ukraine, with the help from the west, has managed to develop useful technologies both for the war effort and for use outside the war zone. Think pizza delivery by drones, coming to your door next year. 

After a solid hour of this, I reluctantly suggest we head back. Millie has been in her crate for a while now, and even more importantly, there appear to be storm clouds in the west. (Did you ever wonder how it is that stormy skies never sidestep you or go in another direction but instead always, always come straight at you?)

I pedal at top speed. Nothing like a storm to get me to work hard on that bike. A 45 minute ride turns into a 30 minute ride. And I can't help but remember all those bike trips I took as a kid, spending summers in the Polish village with my grandmother. The storms would come suddenly and they would terrify me. It felt like the next bolt of lightening would target me. Trees were suddenly my enemies (they attracted lightening!), but open fields were worse -- they offered no protection at all. 

We got wet, but of course, we were perfectly safe. And at my age, reason took charge. No, lightening would not seek me out and in the one in a million chance that it did, well, I'm 73 and I lived a good life! When you're biking, your thoughts are often not very complicated (though Ed swears it's the opposite -- for him, deep contemplation is best achieved when he is speeding on a bike).

Home is all about Millie: brushing her, keeping her quiet, taking her out again and again. She is still such a puppy!

No family Sunday dinner today. We're still working on schedules for the fall semester and I dont know that me cooking dinner for the young family on Sundays is part of the grand plan. And so I have a quiet evening. Well, Millie is a little hyped up. Must be the changes in the weather. They say dogs can detect and are affected by fluctuations in weather patterns -- drops in pressure, the coming of a rain. Millie has had a lot to work with in that arena today!

with so much love... 

 

roads to nowhere

In the book I'm reading (with the apt title "When Will There Be Good News," by Kate Atkins -- it's the third novel in the Jackson Brodie series), the protagonist finds himself on a road weaving through the desolate Scottish landscape, without any idea if he's on the right path and indeed, with a half thought that this road is off the grid, off the charts, and leading to nowhere. I paused and thought about this: isn't that a spot-on description of where I am with my sick friend? There is no clear vision of what's beyond the bend, and maybe there's nothing beyond the bend, and maybe the weather will overtake us (in the book, Jackson feels the threat of a snow storm in the air) and we wont get a chance to take the next bend, or maybe we'll be stuck on this road until we get so tired that we have to pull over (pull over where? these Scottish roads are so narrow!) and give ourselves a rest.

 

*     *     * 

A cloudy and cool morning. It portends nothing. No real rainfall, no cheerful setting for breakfast on the porch. Still, I'm not giving up. I am known for not giving up on things that matter to me. (I give up quickly enough on things that don't - like a boring book, or an excessively sweet desert.) So, breakfast outside.

Now, how to give you an idea about this day... I'm stumped! When that happens, I follow my camera and chronology here on Ocean.  

So, to start with: I began by doing something weird. Not objectively weird, but for me -- weird:  I spent a good half hour grooming Millie (not weird) and then putting ribbons to her hair (weird). I am not the type to favor fru fru stuff for my pup, but I'd seen a cute photo of a doodle with bows and I thought it might be a fun fit for Millie. 

It wasn't. She is so shaggy that the ribbons got lost in her hair and anyway, what would you say is a good color for her, because deep pink just seems so wrong?

Next, I had lunch with the boys (Sandpiper and Sparrow) and their grandfather who is visiting. Now how on earth did that come to pass? Well, everyone was super busy, and Snowdrop was off with a friend and her other grandmother (the kids each have three grandmas), leaving the boys and their grandfather (once my husband) in need of a ride for a lunch and possibly other activities. So I kept them company for the afternoon.

(Sparrow really wanted a croissant!)

(oh, you two!!)

(ice cream for dessert)

 

 

 

 (the library's next; books were ignored!)

 

 

Next -- Millie had been in her crate for four hours so I take her out to her yard for a romp now. She would have liked to have played with passing dogs (note her wistful gaze out)...

... but none here are in the category of "good playmates" so she is stuck with me.

 

*     *     * 

So.... that's it? What's so strange about this day? Sounds pretty normal and almost uneventful. Well yes, but every hour of the day had elements of my sick friend in it. A phone call. A text. Many texts. Decisions. Responding to decisions. Every single hour. Even when I was putting ribbons in Millie's fur (such a mismatch for her!), I had to pause because texts were pouring in and schedules had to be coordinated and changes in plans processed. 

But at the end of the day, I'm feeling a sense of accomplishment, however trivial it may be, so maybe it isn't a road to nowhere, despite the existential musings of Jackson Brodie. And is there really ever such a thing as a road to nowhere? They all have something at the end of them, even if it's a fence with a closed gate. It's still something, somewhere. 

with so much love... 

 

and one more

Might this be the last of the beautiful days? I can always hope for good weather, but I do remember Septembers of the past, where it rained most days, and other Septembers when it was too hot and too buggy, so it's not a given. (When you are 73, you have a lot of Septembers behind you so I suppose you've seen it all, though with climate change, perhaps we haven't seen it all, and what we haven't seen is likely not going to make us feel that great!)

Calm. How older people love calm! I did not see that coming. If you'd ask me at 20, 40, 60 what kind of a pace or lifestyle would suit me best, calm wouldn't even make the top ten. And now, when I think of contentment, I think -- it cannot happen without a long stretch of calm.

And I can find it: in the morning, on the porch, with Millie and a book.

But then, the turmoil begins. Today, for example, was supposed to be a rose day. Millie goes to day care, kids are not yet in need of after school care. Calm. I have a rose to plant and some decisions to make about future plantings. 

None of this happens, There are problems with the care of my ailing friend (and I am so sorry I write minimally about this, but of course, privacy concerns abound). Friends are stepping in. How much can I do? What is helpful anyway? I don't know! 

I think back to my busy July and I see that I may have worked hard and done a lot, and yet there was calm. I wasn't worried. Then came August, and Shakespeare plays, and boom! Right in the thick of Lady Capulet moaning on stage about the death of her noble cousin and her daughter -- whamo! The ax fell, news of illness, news of deterioration, news of treatment, news of improvement, then further deterioration, then holding steady, then down again -- I swear a putty ball could not be more erratic in its bouncing habits than this crazy stuff happening to her right now.

Funny (but not so funny) coincidence: I last attended a Young Shakespeare Players production of Romeo and Juliet some 35 years ago when my daughters were just kids and performed in it. That summer I got sick. My brain exploded. Or something. I was bed ridden for a long time. And I recovered of course. So do we have a repeat of that? A close friend gets sick, struggles ensue, but maybe soon the dips will disappear and she will be on the mend? One hopes, but in the meantime, things are dicey. 

 

I do clean up some black spot fungus on some of the roses. This is what I learned through trial and error -- if you are picking roses for your garden and you dont want to be fighting with black-spot disease, pick roses that are resistant to it. Color, size, fragrance -- they're all fine, but a fungus can take down all the leaves and then it's just a matter of time for the poor rose. 

Mostly, my flowers are doing okay. A couple of failures, a handful of regrets (why oh why did I think that was a good choice?), but for the most part, it's all good. But dry.

I spend the afternoon watering. Half of the front beds, done. The rest? No time. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe not.

I pick up a playful joyous Millie. Perfect. I open the gate to her yard, she frolics, I plant the rose. Rather randomly. Into a pre-dug hole. Because it's there and because I can do it with Millie. My best gardening buddy, I'm exhausting you, aren't I?

Earlier in the day, I drove by something that I'd seen many many times around the farmette, but I rarely see (or hear) now. I don't know why they aren't in the fields here this summer. I miss them.

with so much love... 

 

moments of pleasure

Which wise person reminded us that the greatest pleasure, happiness, contentment -- call it what you want -- comes from the smallest things, events, moments in your day? Was it Epicurus and his philosophy of modest pleasure? Socrates, for whom the secret to happiness was not in seeking out more, but to figuring out how to enjoy less? I'm thinking actually of someone like the German poet Wilhelm Busch, who claimed that happiness is found in paying attention to everyday, minor occurrences. I think Tolstoy made a similar claim. Beauty in small things. It's an idea that has been repeated over the centuries, and yet, here we are, waiting for the big events to sweep us away. A wedding, a lavish cruise, the best camera to take the best photos. All good, I'm sure, but I had to smile as my daughter wrote this morning how much joy she had in seeing her two younger kids, and especially Sandpiper who starts kindergarten this year, enter the school on go-to-school day yesterday. His own space to hang his jacket and backpack, his own school supplies, his own classroom. Here, let me post (with her permission) two photos from that first school visit (as a student -- he'd been to the school as a sibling numerous times for various sibling events): 

 

 

 

 

 

 Also from yesterday -- an evening photo of mine, this one of Millie being blown away by the sight of the moon (or so I'd like to believe!):

 

 

 

This morning is again beautiful. I know this endless string of gorgeous days will come to an end. I will miss them. 

(here's a delight: the return of my hummingbird)

 

 

Though I must admit -- I do not last long on the porch. Breakfast, and a brief reading spell...

... and then Millie and I retire indoors. Without a breeze, the sun can get quite intense, even in moderate summer temperatures. I wonder if that warmth will make it possible to sit outside on a sunny winter day, as you would, say, in the mountains, where the sun's heat can often have you pulling off your jacket, even on snow covered hilltops.  

Millie's coat is getting long again. She gets hot quickly and so I pass on taking her to the park. We do walk over to Tati's and I'm happy to report that if you tell her "we're going to the coffee shop," she gets excited.

 

 

 

And once there, she looks expectantly at me. Don't you owe me a pup cup? -- her eyes ask. 

 

 

 

Later, we do spend some time outside in her yard. I have to water and snip the roses there. She loves going out to it with me. She runs, she rests. She very much believes it to be her special place. And it is. And I'm glad.

 

 

Much of the rest of the day is a throwaway.  I have a good Zoom call with Bee, but I can't say that anything else was productive (meaning there was an unhealthy amount of screen time in the mix). I'm still in shock how quickly everything flipped on that first weekend of the month when I found out my friend was ill. Trying to keep tabs on how all that is going, keeping in close communications with her family and friends -- this takes an enormous amount of time and it's draining. Ed can tune out trouble like you wouldn't believe. Me -- I can function alright (resilient!), I can find those pockets of pleasure, but just that. I aim for nothing higher. A real Tolstoyan attitude, no? Low expectations, eyes wide open to the beautiful day, the flowers and sunshine. My cool home. My pup. My cup of coffee at Tati's. Lovely moments, all of them. It's just that half of my head (or is it more?) is wrapped up in the gauze of that other happening -- the unraveling of a person that I've been very close to for a very long time. I suppose we all unravel in some way at some point, but when it strikes close to the heart, well, you close yourself off to the pleasures of the type Socrates told us we should give up on anyway. The big stuff. 

Okay, time to walk Millie one last time. If anyone is my round the clock source of tickled pleasure it's that girl. Always there. Always anxiously watching to see what's next. In reassuring her, I reassure myself. Good stuff ahead of us, my girl! Good stuff ahead!

with so much love... 

where have you been?!

Yet another beautiful day... Warm but not hot. Gentle breeze. Sunshine. Birds are going nuts on my feeder!

 

 

 

Yet another breakfast outside, on the porch, with Millie. And with roses clipped from my garden.

It feels so calm, so heavenly that my book drops down to my lap and I fall asleep. It seems that this is the pattern for me: if I let myself drift into relaxation, I get sleepy. Millie doesn't mind. She snoozes underneath my chair, equally feeling that bliss of a summer morning.

My plan for the day requires careful timing. I need to pick up some flowers at the farmers market downtown, I need to drop Millie at doggie daycare, and I need to drop off the flowers and then pick up Snowdrop and bring her home. I then need to feed her lunch, then take her for a haircut and yes, she talks me into purple hair once again. (She asks the hair person to make it more permanent. Thankfully, they dont do "permanent purple." Personally, I like it best on her when it fades a little, but of course, preteen girls have little patience for a grandmother's views in the matter of personal appearance. And then I'm to bring her home and I'll be picking up Millie and then that's it -- I will have done everything I've been tasked with for this day.

Let's see how it all unfolds:

First, the downtown market. 

(Remember when I used to post our skyline views? For the next five years all we get is construction views.)

 

 

The Wednesday one is much much smaller than the Friday one and this is definitely a plus. You go, you shop, you leave. And here's the best part: since it takes place on a wide street with big city sidewalk spaces, they do not ban dogs. This is Millie's first trip downtown and certainly first trip to the market there!

We come right up to my favorite flower vendor from years back. Where have you been?? -- she asks. I thought maybe you moved! I've been thinking about you! 

There is no good response to her kind concern. I tell her it's the dog, that I haven't really been to the market at all (just once, briefly). but that I will try to come to the Wednesday markets going forward.

Especially since Millie seems intrigued by the whole concept of "downtown." The people (who seem to find her to be deliciously cute, so much more so than the suburban types in my neighborhood who are just into their own dogs), the flowers... Well, maybe not the flowers. Millie sees flowers as potential nibbling material, nothing more.

I pick up Snowdrop, pausing to chat with my daughter for a few minutes. And on the drive to Steffi's House, Snowdrop excitedly tells me about her first "real crush" (it's mutual, gaga!), and all about her camp experiences, and it feels like I've finally caught up with her this summer. 

Okay, lunch...

 

 

 

... haircut and color...

then her home, then Millie, and then back to Steffi's.

So, where have I been all these weeks? Doing just this: keeping to a schedule. Moving from one thing to the next. With long pauses, when I can afford them, on the porch. and with my flowers.

with so much love...

 

a very long breakfast

My porch chairs, which I took from the farmette (Ed and I had purchased them when we first finished the screened porch there) are good for about a 90 minute sit. After that, the back feels rough and my feet need a lift. This is a good thing, or else Millie and I would have lingered from 8 til noon, that's how much I love watching the world from behind the wall of flowers. And sipping my milky coffee.

 

*     *     * 

It is quiet to the front of the house. Were I in the back, I'd hear the rumble of a CAT excavator. There are two empty lots on the other side of the back alley and today the construction people who will eventually build there, are clearing weeds and leveling the "dirt."  And once again I marvel about the timing.They're doing this just as I have finished major digging in Steffi's Gardens. I have hauled hundreds of buckets of stone and construction crap and clay soil there. A drop in the bucket for the lots. Once smoothed over, it will all become the base of a new construction project. But for me, this empty lot made gardening possible. What would have I done with the awful "soil" had I not had that wasteland in the back? Most likely I would have dumped it to the rear of farmette lands. But it would have required so many trips there, and lengthy walks to the back of the property. I thank my lucky stars that many aspects of garden creation fell into my lap with perfect timing.

 

*     *     * 

I spend a few minutes on the bench in Millie's Yard. (Let's face it -- this should be the proper name for our fenced space.) It is the best space for doing nothing. I glance at the roses -- one after the next -- and take in the various other plantings. 

 

 

 

Millie finds her shady spots. 

 

 

 

We are content here, in our bubble of flowers and shade.

*     *     *

By noon, I am sure Millie could use a walk. It's not easy to do this on a leash. She resists going beyond the block (in either directions). Unfamiliar scents cause her to do a doggie stall: sit down and refuse to budge.  And so to the dog park we go!

And walk she does. No running today. Too warm? Too timid? We dont see other dogs. Perhaps she needs their presence to set herself free. 

*     *     *

In the later afternoon, my daughter's friend (who is visiting from California) comes over to check out Steffi's House and to pay his respects to the aging person living there! I haven't seen him since Poland (he traveled with us there). It is so hard to believe that only two months have passed since that trip. Normally I do not clock in so many events into so short a period. Seems like a year at least.

 

*     *     * 

And in the evening Ed is here for a supper of leftovers. He comes at a time when the mood here is rather... subdued. Things are not going well with my friend. All I can do is lean on his shoulder and sigh.

 

with so much love... 

 

embers

I wasn't a Girl Scout (no such option was available to me at my New York City school), but I did go to a Y camp where I sang with the rest of them the song that I've subsequently learned is a Scouting song, titled Each Campfire Lights Anew. And as the embers die away, we wish that we could ever stay, but since we cannot have away, we'll come again another day.

The end of the reunion came today. Honestly, there is a sense of finality to this day that extends far beyond the reunion. I had had three big, no, huge events for this year's summer. The family trip to Poland. The move to Steffi's House. Planting Steffi's garden. And two smaller but no less important ones: Grandma Camp, and finally the Reunion. When I would check off any one of these, I would focus immediately on the next. 

Today, the last of them ended. I spent a morning with Barbara and then drove her to her young family's home. 

And now I am with my own thoughts, and I have no pressing events to which I should shift my attention. No plans. No crunch time because there is no deadline. I did everything I had to do, culminating in this weekend of our reunion, during which I could begin to unwind, or at least imagine life without an immediate event looming before me.

It would be very easy to feel the enormity of it all. A sort of PTSD moment where I fall apart at the idea that I am no longer beholden to an intense series of days. No preparations. No fears of failure. But also no craziness to fill my day. I can now finally sit on the bench in Millie's yard and enjoy a moment of rose gazing. Or read a book in my book corner. Or sip a milky coffee on the porch. 

I can, and yet...

I'm still picking up the pieces. And maybe I dont want to let go of it all just yet, because then I would have to confront my future days and in doing this, I would plunge into useless worry about my sick friend for whom I can do very little these days. 

Still, I am transitioning. Into something else. Though I am too tired to imagine what that something might be.

*     *     *

Barbara and I stayed up late last night. Way past midnight for me. Millie was delighted with the whole weekend and Barbara continued to be delighted with her, so it was a harmonious threesome that sat back and chatted (or occasionally barked) into the wee hours.

This morning, Millie did ask me to please get up at the usual hour and honestly, I was more than happy to do so, because the day is so lovely, the sunlight so gentle, the breeze so cool.

(two morning views)

 

 

 

 

Barbara came down for breakfast...

And here, we lingered forever. This time I do remember what kept us to the table: filling in some blanks. We've known each other forever, and yet there are many things that I either do not know or do not remember about my friend. Like where she lived as a young child. Or what dog she had growing up. Or what was the subject of her dad's work. Or where her daughter had had a bat-mitzvah. Endless details that to me are fascinating because they are like those missing puzzle pieces -- they complete a familiar by now picture. Of course, you never quite finish the project of sharing a past with someone, but still, you feel great every time more pieces are found.

 

 

 

We drove Millie to doggie daycare, we shopped for kombucha, because I had never tried it. (So many things your friends can teach you!) And then I dropped her off and came home.

*     *     * 

I'll be thinking about this summer, this whole year in fact, for a long time. Maybe while sitting outside and enjoying the dapple and dance of the maple leaves in Millie's yard. My tree planted yesterday, tree of love, friendship, of great beauty. 

I'm sure with time I will imagine new projects and develop new ideas on how to clutter up my life. For now though -- I'm giving myself one big exhale. 

with so much love... 

reunion

I'm thinking of Dickens, writing about peaceful London and violent Paris at the end of the 18th century. At several moments this weekend these words kept circling around in my head -- it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Dickens did a deep dive straight into the paradoxes of the human condition -- the hope and despair, the wisdom and foolishness. My weekend could have served as an example for him: all in one place, in one set of days, the calm and joyful, the worried and agitated. The best of times, the worst of times.

My friends' visit is fabulous. You cannot help but love a day of meals together, of hikes, Millie romps, tree plantings. And yet, weaving its way through the day is this ongoing drama with my ill friend. Sometimes it spikes, sometimes it runs parallel to a joyful moment, sometimes, but not often, I can put it aside. Happy as a clam, unhappy as a clam at low tide. Both at the same time. One doesn't displace the other. 

It's remarkable how adaptable and resilient we can be.

So, about those happy times:

Breakfast, of course.

And then a drive to Prairie Morraine dog park. Yes, with my dog. Of course with my dog. I've not taken Millie there before. She barely manages not to freak out at my local dog park. So many unfamiliar scents! People! Dogs! But yesterday, she managed the nearby park well and so today the three of us -- my reunited law school friends along with me -- drove out with Millie to Prairie Morraine. The park that Henry loved so much. Let's give Millie a chance to fall in love with it as well.

And she does. My pup is cautious, but also cautiously happy. I am gratified to see her not shy away from dogs, nor their owners. For the first time in my life, I am at this wonderful gorgeous park...

... with a dog that just wants to be friends with everyone. Cautiously, but with love and affection for the world and its inhabitants.

The walk is lovely, the weather is perfect. The prairie flowers -- black eyed susan, evening primrose, bee blossom -- in full bloom.

After a good spin around this huge park, we drive to K&A Greenhouse. Barbara had the idea that I should put in a tree that would provide some shade in the Millie yard My furry pup is always on the lookout for shade.. Maybe a river birch? We drive out to look at all the discounted now trees at the nursery.

The birches are tall and threatening to grow to heights and widths that would overwhelm the space.  Moreover, I am warned to be on the look out for birch leaf miner. And provide preventive treatment every couple of years, or else. That felt burdensome. I back away from a birch. How about a redbud? Dont like the leaves that are big and unattractive after the flowers disappear. A maple maybe? No! We have huge maples at the farmette! Talk about overwhelming! 

I have just the thing -- says the nursery person. You know that when they say "I have just the thing" you should be wary of the suggestion. And yet, I think he pointed us to the perfect tree -- a Korean Japanese maple called Jack Frost.

Such dainty leaves, promising great color come fall! And a reasonable height. Perfection itself.

And now we can come home for lunch.  And more discussions about hugely important subjects, so important that I can't at the moment remember any of them, 

Evening. Time to take Diane to the airport. She's due to travel to her own younger family. It's just Barbara and me for dinner tonight. (Pasta, salad...)

Oh and Millie. Until tomorow at least, I have Barbara. And Millie.

 

with so much love...