The Red-Veined Flower on the Blue-Hued Sky

I met Annika along the high plateau of Chanticleer, and she told me stories; then we walked. She has come to know this garden better than most—located the cotton flowers (white and pale pink), the butterfly on a man's blue shirt, the strange dish of red that passes for a flower in the woods, the place where the artichoke had bloomed. I told her stories of asparagus and of cutting gardens; I showed her the rock that recalls my mother, down in the bed beneath the old katsura trees: the wedge of sun between us.

This slice of afternoon had not been planned; not really. It was nearly spontaneous and might not have happened had I not decided simply to be this weekend. To finish reading one fat book, and to buy two more, to go on (as I do) with my friend Andra, who listens and understands. To make dinner something simple and to talk at length by phone with my son, who seems far away and near at once, attuned to every speck of stuff he's learning.

It's beautiful out there today. Live it, I tell myself.