Hi!!!

I'm back in my cramped little computer chair, ready to--excuse the expression--blog! I've figured out the odd feeling of dislocation I was going through the last few days: I missed this! It was like being on a vacation from a job you like and wouldn't mind getting back to. This, my friends, is a totally new experience for me. I love the whole Delaware thing and know that it is nothing but an enhancement to my life, but so is this daily dose of concentration and stringing words together, and of sharing music, and of checking in on the creativity of the other cool people I've discovered in this virtual world. The two aren't at all mutually exclusive, but they sure are different! Here, we can be totally self-indulgent, say what we want, play the songs we like, and know there's somebody out there who enjoys the products of our indulgence. Out in the physical world we have to be a bit more circumspect and make room for others. I'm getting spoiled in this virtual place.

It's a bit warmer here than it was 135 miles east, by the water, but still coolish. It looks very, very inviting outside and if I got to work on something out there I know I'd be in my shirtsleeves soon enough. The grass is a tall, thick green after its mowing just last week--needs to be cut again. The daffodils blasted while I was away and need to be dead-headed. Rosebuds are forming. The lilac is just about ready to burst and is giving off its heavenly scent; flowerbuds are showing on the peonies and I'll be looking every day for buds on the irises. I'm actually a bit anxious about the irises because I thinned them two autumns ago and they didn't come back very strong last year. They seem to be doing better this year. Among the newer hybrids are progeny of the old-fashioned Dutch irises my mother planted in the yard of the house I grew up in, and others she planted in the 1970s at their retirement place by the water. You never can tell what you're taking up and discarding when you thin. I hope plenty of my mother's plants are left....it'll be a tragedy if they're gone.

OK, that other world awaits and I must go see where I best fit into it at the moment. But it's great to be truly "virtual" again!