rainy day Monday

The Brisbane House has withstood many rain showers, many Mondays, many tumultuous periods in history, many periods of beautiful calm. We stayed here for three nights, soaking it all in, reading, sometimes quietly, sometimes out loud, notes and paragraphs describing paintings, prints, stained glass panels, stones, arrowheads, quilts, cabinets. Bits and pieces of its past and therefore our past. If you better understand the place where you live, you likely better understand your own life.

(How narrow the house is! The width of one room, extending to the Summer Kitchen.)

And isn't that the goal of any get together with close friends? To better understand your past and your place in it? Diane, Barbara and I come together periodically, over Zoom during Covid, but in person when possible, fairly regularly and still we learn stuff. Always there is room to fit in new pieces of the puzzle if you're open to it.

Our last morning. Pack, eat, clean, go. That's the agenda. But we don't rush it. Indeed, I'm still just ten days after my surgery so the word rush is foreign to me. Besides, there are birds to listen to.

Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Black-capped Chickadee. Song Sparrow, Eastern Towhee, Wood Thrush.

My friends fix stuff for the morning meal.

And here's a consequence of me being for the most part less mobile -- they do the Airbnb clean up while I give orders from the couch. (That is a joke: I don't really give orders. But I do feel useless and a little like an ancient person. Ah well.)

We drive back to Madison, dropping off Barbara, then continuing to the farmhouse. Oh! Here's a beautiful welcome! The crab apple is just starting its period of bloom!

We're entering the midpoint of spring, the most intense period of the season.

But it is raining. And, too, I have my PT appointment.

[It's with David again. The experienced one. His word is sacred I suppose I expect nothing but many thumbs up. After all, I've been taking all these walks! Slow but steady. He does a little tsk tsk-ing: you're not bending the knee enough in your walk. As for improvement -- you exceed in the muscle strength and knee bend, but you have fallen behind on the leg straightening. In other words -- do better! Shush! the guy doesn't let up.]

In the afternoon, Diane visits family and I bring Snowdrop to the farmhouse.

Evening: the rain has moved on. I look again at this tree that is about to enter its most dressed-up moment. Ha! Dance the cat and a Breese hen also appreciate its exquisite loveliness. Who wouldn't!

The quiet of home. Diane is here, Ed is here, the cats are here, but we are all spent! 

An intense and special weekend behind us. So very grateful to have had these two wonderful people come up for it! 

With love...