Pillowcase in the breeze; light in the forest

Sheet drying in the breeze among geraniums

I wish you all many peaceful sun-dappled days in your future.  May you enjoy days of sweetness, in which the world appears peaceful and lazy, filled with just-enough.  Just enough to do.  Just enough to be. 

Just enough to lazily read a book, lazily vacuum the house, pick a few weeds from your garden.  Chop potatoes and boil eggs for potato salad.  Thaw a whitefish–delivered unexpectedly to your home by a Native American fish salesman a couple of weeks ago.  You ate half of the whitefish already; froze the remainder.  Now you’re making an experimental dijon-mustard-roasted-garlic sauce for the fish.  The house smells like garlic.

Pillowcase in the breeze

Sheets drying on the deck; pillowcase blowing in the slight breeze.  Birds chirping everywhere. 

The world is hushed.  War somewhere overseas?  People fighting?  Riots in Greece?  I feel so protected from this, almost as if it’s not happening, almost as if it’s a far-away dream.  I don’t know if this is good or bad.  But it’s far away from the peace in my heart, like shadows as the sun plays among the dark forest leaves.

The way light illuminates the woods in early evening

The sky is blue, blue, blue.

The daisies dance, the buttercup yearns toward the sun, the lupines exhale with perfumed breath. 

The Garden of Eden is here, now, although tomorrow we may cover it up with our daily cares and worries, forgetting that it is always present, just beneath our latest challenge or fear or despair.

Dappling of forest sunshine

Last night we tried Deb’s Grilled Corn-Avocado-Cilantro recipe (OK, if you have no idea what I’m talkin’ about, go searchin’ for the Cilantro blog I wrote last week.  Click on “comments”.  Scroll down to the cilantro recipe that Deb shared.  PJ Grath shared a good one, too, although we haven’t tried it yet.)  Except we experienced one small snafu.  The grocery store had no cilantro.  Can you imagine such a fiasco?  Here you are, ready to make a cilantro dish, and the IGA refuses to comply. 

“Out of cilantro?” I gasp, astounded, to the poor clerk stocking cans of chili beans.  “Can you go look in the back?”

“I don’t know what cilantro is,” she mumbled, but complied to the poor shopper’s fervent request.

“No,” she reported to the poor shopper’s husband.  “Every other kind of vegetable imaginable back there–but no cilantro.”

Toothy yellow orbs of corn kernels dreaming of olive oil and avocado and cilantro...

 

Lemon pepper marinated shrimp over brown rice with grilled corn, avocado and BASIL.

“Barry, what do you think about BASIL in the dish?” I ask.

“Hey, it should be good,” he replied.

“But it’s not CILANTRO,” I lament.

We decide to give it a try. 

Now we’re excited.  We’re trying something new, something different, something the recipe-writer never dreamed!  We’re substituting BASIL! 

And we do.  And it’s good.

(OK, maybe not as good as cilantro. But good, nonetheless.)

Life is almost perfect.

Almost, I say.

Except for the ant invasion.  When you live in the woods, species tend to invade the house at different times of year.  Now it’s giant ants.  Giant mouse, too.  OK, one giant mouse.

Guess Perfection includes Imperfection.

Now, back to today’s potato salad chilling in the sink, dreaming of salad dressing.  Back to roasted garlic dreaming of whitefish.  Back to garden brocoli producing at monumental speed, more brocoli than you can imagine eating in six settings.

And a bed which needs to be fitted with soft woods-smelling sheets.

**Peace be with you, readers.**