"Butterflies!" "Lots of butterflies!"

On a still evening the fragrance is intense in our front yard, the porch, and even into the house. The fragrance comes mostly from Confederate jasmine and the roses Buff Beauty (1939 - year of introduction) and Maggie (unknown)..

4/19. I’ve been watching for fireflies and tonight was the first night they were out around our house.

4/20. A mother and child about 3-4 years old were walking by the house. The child exclaimed “Butterflies!” His mom responded, “Lots of butterflies!”


Photo: The walk up to our house. The rose on the arbor is New Dawn (1930) and there in another rose with smaller blooms in the right of the photo - Marie Pavie (1888). Blue and white flowers are larkspur, an old-fashioned annual that reseeds every year.

4/22. I was sitting on the front porch and a blue jay landed on the edge of the porch, then quickly flew away. A few minutes later I saw the first hummingbird I’ve seen this year. Aha! I put a wide shallow container of water at the edge of the porch. That will be the 4^th of the sources of water we maintain for birds.

I was watching a television program called Children’s Med. It’s about Children’s Medical Center in Dallas; it’s about life and death and things that are part of those: fear, hope, agony, joy, waiting, the most meticulous work imaginable, and so on. And the staff – some heavy-hitters, people spending years on the edge, people with vast knowledge, people who push the clinical envelope all the way past the known frontiers, people of mercy and compassion… One of the nurses said, “I can’t think of a higher purpose.” It amazes me that I’ve worked with some of those people and I’ve taught some of them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bw6pJHktST8&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PL4DD2FD95512F136C;

Sending time with Leslie (today we tried Colonel Kababz – chicken tika masala, an eggplant dish, naan chicken biryani, onion, potato pastry all for $8); working in the yard; baking cookies, bread, a most amazing flourless chocolate cake; looking to the mountains, to San Francisco, to dancing in the forest. 


Photo: A nice front porch to sit on, seeing (through the roses and other foliage) our quiet street. I made both the tables >40 years ago, the blue and white ceramic incense burner we bought in Saigon; the big pot once held "100 year-old" eggs; there's a kaffir lime tree, fossils, a split rock from the incredible Wind River Mountains, a small Burmese temple gong...