Berlin Reified

The light after yesterday’s storms made me melt

The scenery was mostly unremarkable but I did find this tree and horse

Returned (Brandenburg)

Oh, but it's a wonderful thing to be home and eating scrambled eggs from the chickens you watched scratching in the yard just a few hours earlier. Have you ever seen eggs such a rich shade of saffron? They gratify all my ideas of what it means to keep healthy, happy birds. (My plate, if you're curious, was ten pence from a charity shop on Easter Road in Edinburgh.)

Wednesday afternoon

Errands in the afternoon, to the photo shop, to the children's toy store, to the post box and the Italian shop, to the knitting shop (I have a new project!) and the bakery for bread.

The basket on the left has a teapot and two cups. Kate and I sat in the park drinking fresh mint tea swirled with Brandenburg honey and making plans.

Now David, S and I are off into the sun and green. Happy Easter!

Returned (Edinburgh)

The best visits reverberate even after you're back. I spent a few days in Edinburgh with Clare and brought home the sound of gulls, the taste of Valvona & Crolla's San Francisco sourdough bread and Troy's quinoa salad, some linen skirts and a little leather satchel from the flea market that S now carries about with great glee.

It had been so long since I walked for hours in a city in that unencumbered way that's only possible when you haven't got a stroller to push. We went to the Cameo and the Fruitmarket Gallery Cafe, and cleaned up at the Stockbridge charity shops. Now home and unpacking, and wondering at that string of golden days that's stretching out before us. This April is divine.

The blind shop (or, The beautiful & the useful)

The blind shop is an exemplary union of beauty and use. Those zebraed brushes make me want to dust. (I never dust.)

I don't know what I'd rather do, ruffle the tops of these brooms and feel the prickle of the bristles, or trace my finger along those neat red and blue stripes.

Bread & Honey

Right now I want simple things and just a little of them. I drizzled my buttered bread with Italian chestnut honey and that breakfast's earthy sweetness has occupied me all morning.