Perfect summer

Today has been the most perfect day I've had in as long as I can remember. Good sleep, which for me is still and always rare enough to be remarkable when it happens. The house when I woke up was quiet, shady, breezy, green, flowers in all the rooms ... puttering around before breakfast, dogs dozing, the sound of sycamore leaves rustling in the wind, fresh laundry on the line, a yellow bowl of blueberries and a blue and white china cup of green tea. At about 10 o'clock Mr. A got home from a week away working nights, and I rubbed his hands and feet with lavender until he had to leave again at 11. For lunch, a bowl of steamed vegetables and a few flaxseed crackers with spicy hummus. The wind was still blowing, but it felt fresh and alive to me, not oppressive like usual. I sat in the adirondack chair in the giant green room under the sycamore tree reading a biography of Carl Jung and listening to the leaves until I got sleepy, then went in and took a long, luxurious nap. Woke up, ran a bath out on the patio, leaned back in warm water looking at colors of trees and flowers, listening to the wind ... Drove two flats of honey (bottled and labeled last night, finally) over to the community garden just as the last workers were leaving and spent a half hour or so walking the new paths in the early evening light. Shopped for groceries, drove home, made the dogs their dinner, ate mine, walked Tater down the road to see the new cows, hand-watered the salvias and geraniums on the front porch, lit a new grapefruit and lavender scented candle, and sat down to watch the Last Picture Show.

I've hardly spoken a word to anyone all day. The house has been silent except for the leaves, the wind, the sound of birds. Somehow it's so easy to feel happy, whole, and at peace on days like this. It reminds me of when I used to live alone; it reminds me why the hermit's life is still so appealing to me, even though I know it really isn't the way I want to live all the time. Time alone feels like forever when you know there's nobody coming home at the end of the week. When somebody is, it feels like magic.

This summer somehow feels to me like certain other summers I remember – 1982, 1983, 1985, 1990, 1997 ... Soft, warm days, cool nights, green trees, lots of time alone to ride my bike and walk and sleep and think and dream.

Walking up my road tonight I was struck again by how amazingly beautiful it is here. Every day it's like I notice it again for the first time. I don't think I'll ever get tired of it.