Purpose: To Be Here Now.

It is not raining. The pavement is dry. The temperature at 10:45am is just under 60 degrees Fahrenheit. The ericaceious shrub by the gate has a few blooms and a lot of purple buds that have cracked open, and are perfuming the air sweetly. It isn't the same edible cinnamon honey spice smell that the mountain laurel along the mother river have. It is a more hard-edged sweetness, almost as if it came from a bottle and not a plant. The fountain is gurgling, it is for the cat, otherwise she would drink from the toilet. The sky is wide rows of gray with thin spots, floating toward the north. From here Mount Hood is to the east, and Mount St Helen's is to the northeast. I think. I can't lay hands on a compass right now. Oh, another flower that is blooming is the flowers I bought last year at the grocery store. I don't know what they are. When they stopped blooming I planted them in the ground late last summer, and they actually bloomed again in the fall. Now they are blooming again. White and pink and purple flowers low to the ground---they have already adjusted to the new ground that they are rooted in, under a tree that makes deep shade in the summer. For now the tree has no leaves, and the flowers on the ground get the occasional beam of sunlight. The sunlight here feels weak after living in Arizona. The sun felt too hot there, and here it feels puny. When it is out. The sun shone in my window at dawn, before it went over the layers, or before the layers came in. The sun pierces right into my office in the morning, it is the best thing about this space. I have laundry to fold. And a walk to go on. To check on what else is blooming.