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This week:

Sat outside in late dusk….the tenderness of the evening, air so soft, color so lovely that green of trees had soft sulphur poured into the palette, wind so chimes were playing….an outdoor cathedral with my old and huge camphor tree as ceiling through which shadowing sky showed.

Seized by orchid fever starting by going to Orchid Express to have orchid replanted. They did it for free, and I walked among the ones blooming. Then Kroger’s and Whole Foods both had orchids for $9. So now I have three in all, two blooming creamy hopeful faces, one, repotted, hopefully to bloom in the fall.

Read Jessica Mitford‘s memoir, Hons and Rebels, in a day, the Hons being short for Honorable, which is the title given the daughters of lords. She was part of the extraordinary Mitford sisters, some six young women who took the 1930s world by storm. She ran off with a young rebel and anti-fascist, Esmond Romilly, at 19, and her memoir ends with his early death (the war, the second world war). She felt entombed by her English life and family and broke free like an eagle suddenly untethered. I think about my  life, no war, no earthquake, no tsunami, no radiation, no political unrest that involves guns– in a sense, no way to be extraordinary or not by a huge test of character, so my test must be making the best of it and looking at what is set in front of me and finding its story and practicing gratitude, hard for a restless spirit like mine, a spirit I soothe by reading the tales of others who flew the coop….

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