Listics

The quiet and the fresh air — cranes on the marsh, a cock pheasant’s squawk… a car goes by then silence again except for bird song. Our daffodils and tulips haven’t bloomed yet. The forsythia has just flowered. Hepatica buds have pushed the leaves aside. The bloodroot is emerging. The diseased birch is dripping sap on the driveway. Fruit trees are budding up, but no blossoms yet.

Jake has finished re-roofing the granary and parked his tractor in the tobacco shed.

Brandy and Veneta are glad to be home from the kennel.

In New York the hotel lobby had a huge bouquet of cherry branches in blossom. Saw the same bouquet at the plaza and again at a restaurant. Forced cherry blossoms and 24 hour taxi horns were much the thing last week.

Yesterday in Princeton we drove past Fuld Hall. The IAS is more isolated than I would have thought. A log with a teacher at one end and a student at the other… updated with yellow ruled legal pads, some Ticonderoga number two pencils, daffodils in bloom…

Photographed a small marble Rodin Danaid at McCormick Hall. Traipsed around the campus oohing and ahhhing over the wonderful architecture.

Celebrated Beth’s birthday with her twin brother Walt and family, then up this morning for a flight home that was better than last week’s flight out.