Checking in

There has not been time for catching breath (a.k.a. blogging, hence my love of Instagram, like a microblog). There have been many wild walks, dinners, and picnics for paying customers (who are often also friends). And lots of rain. Hundreds of photos must be downloaded and uploaded (my phone camera stores images in the cloud, my camera on a memory stick, so... down and up) and sorted into their respective files on my computer (and then backed up, note-to-self), the result of weeks of lush spring foraging, gardening and recipe creation. And I look forward to a full day of Sunday rain to catch up, and just sort. An unsorted life really rattles me.

Also, I will vacuum.

The drink is delicious. The pink is from the syrup of the pine cone jam I have been making this last week - baby pine cones cooked till soft in syrup; for the drink, add gin and good tonic, and a pollen-heavy male pine cone cluster for effect. It is being sipped at 7pm on the terrace to the tune of a singing robin, a declaring cardinal, and chirping sparrows. The huge trees across the empty roofs of the benign business that envelopes our little row of townhouses are a very fresh green. In the windowboxes on the railings the arugula and lettuce, herbs and pansies are looking like I had hoped they would, in early April. We are already eating our own salads, cilantro and mint. I just sowed some purple basil. Yesterday I moved the cardamom plant outside. I even planted  a rose. We'll see.

As I write the Frenchman is headed home to Brooklyn after an afternoon's paragliding, upstate. And in a few weeks - it does not seem real - we take a short vacation to the French Alps, where he will fly, and I will hike and look at plants. We will get together every evening and discuss. I fell in love with the Alps when I was a teenager and my mother took me to Switzerland. I may not come home. It will be our first vacation together (ever) that is not to visit family. And my first Elsewhere since 2006. For as long as I have lived 8,000 miles from home I have gone home, and nowhere else. And Else beckons, loudly. It always has. I itch to travel, and my French husband longs for the land that stamped his DNA. So fuckit. We have broken loose. Thank goodness for AirBnB.

The first drops of rain are falling. Supper calls. I think an aubergine just exploded...

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