Friday

Doesn't it appear as if a day is composed of separate pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that, however assembled, and with pieces that sometimes are there and sometimes missing, it nonetheless always produces a clear and coherent whole?

Perhaps the only question for me is this then -- what will I be using for my picture of this day? Breakfast and garden for sure. What else?

But though I will admit to the similarities -- yes, there will also be Snowdrop and yes, she will be playing/swimming/swinging and yes, occasionally there'll be a cheeper or two, and maybe a glance at the venerable farmhouse, still, none of these pieces seem identical to ones I'd inserted before. A day is an unwritten book for me. I'll have the rough contours of it even before I get up, but I never feel it to be predictable or mundane.

Still, this is hard to convey on Ocean. How could I possibly labor over the detail that is part and parcel of each image here? And how boring it would be to read all that detail! (For example, you wouldn't know it, and what does it matter tot he reader anyway, but in fact, I was truly entranced this morning by the first bloom on one of my newly planted "prairie moonlight" day lilies. This is a really graceful, beautiful day lily, with, in my view, an enchanting name and, I'm told, a delicious fragrance, though I haven't yet experienced that part of it. I must have admired this flower for a good many minutes. But of course, here, it appears as merely an image from my garden walk...)






Breakfast -- such a stable piece of the puzzle! But today Ed wasn't hungry. And still, we sat and gossiped about chickens and children and mopeds and who knows what else. (Java has started to be broody -- sitting on her egg, or sometimes what she thinks may be her egg hours on end, expecting it to hatch...)






This week, a recurring piece of the day's puzzle is my repeat coffees with my lovely friend who is in town. Each time, at a different coffee shop! A wonderful way to spend the hours of the morning!






And then I pick up Snowdrop. Oh, just another photo of us on our neighborhood adventure! This time she is pushing the stroller with me. But what I remember best from the moment when I took the picture is that we were standing underneath a blooming linden tree. The fragrance was profound and at once, I was transported to Sorede (the place Ed and I went to for four years in a row, right at the end of June. It seems that linden trees bloom here and in the south of France in the very same weeks...).






Here is a photo -- the linden tree from today's walk -- that makes me smile, not for its beauty, but for the heavenly scent that it puts forth. (So evocative is it for me, that a Sorede blooming linden is my permanent desktop photo on my travel laptop.)






And here's a happy little girl on the play ground structure. But actually, ours was a fleeting visit. She was apprehensive today. Too many older kids in the park.






And two photos of Snowdrop at the community pool, where we returned today after yesterday's happy hour spent there.


Happy to feel the cool waters...






Happy to send streams of water into the air...






But even though the pool was far less crowded today, the activity around us was a tad out of control. And though Snowdrop wanted to stay in, she hovered near me rather than venturing out on her own.


At the farmhouse now -- well, that surely is a piece of the puzzle that you've seen a lot these past weeks: grocery shopping!






And to be thorough, I should include the absolutely for sure daily repetition of book reading. Only the reading matter changes and sometimes, not even that!






Typically, my active part of the day ends with the early evening departure of the little girl. Yesterday, I was so sure that no other photo would be forthcoming, that I put up a post just after supper, only to find myself a few minutes later riding the rural roads on Rosie -- something that was dreamy beautiful and certainly deserving a spot on Ocean, so I opened up my post and put in an extra paragraph or two to commemorate this piece of magic.

Today, too, there are lovely pieces of the puzzle that continue to emerge, even as Snowdrop wakes up and is picked up by her parents.

There is, for example, the dinner out with Ed and his friend. We go to Estrellon -- a restaurant that has recently opened here under the leadership of Chef Tory Miller -- whom I know from my days of working at L'Etoile, but whose restaurants have climbed into stratospheres that in recent years are over and beyond where Ed and I typically would go to eat (insofar as we even eat out -- a rarity, as I love to cook at home).






Today's dinner is really a return of a favor to a friend. I'm the tagalong. But oh, what a good meal it is to tag along to!

And this photo of the paella - it's pretty. It's delicious. For me, there's more -- it reminds me of all the paella we'd eaten in Spain, in the days when Ed and I traveled there together...






(The dessert? That's just plain delicious: a basque cake with trimmings...)






So yes, I agree: just glancing at the puzzle pieces, they are a touch similar, and many of them -- a tad predictable. Until they're not. And even when they are similar, they are never, ever the same.