What fun to live in a small town, where you can bike past the library and have your neighbors shout greetings from their car, dog leaning out the window for a sniff of spring.
Past downtown, and that charming little steeple, past the coffee shop where everyone knows everyone, past the tiny Thai cafe where two sisters are already chopping vegetables, laughing all the while...
It was early morning and we had already packed the Easter boxes with food for the hungry. Soon I'm pedalling back over the bridge toward home.
What an amazing impressionist painting I saw in the water below...
like Monet come to life right here, right now.
Ours is an ordinary town full of extraordinary pleasures...
shadows on the bridge,
dandelions sprinkled on the sides of the path atop the dike along the river...
And then, just below that beautiful river there are the tulip fields.
I am alone here in all this splendor.
Sun shines through the petals as I bike along, wind ruffling my hair.
I am by myself here in the fields, singing at the top of my lungs.
So much splendor and I am alone with all of it,
drinking in those amazing colors, ready to spill it out onto paper when I get back to the studio.
For some odd reason I just love to lay back along the row and gaze at the tulips from the bottom up.
And when you're alone, you can do just that!
There is nothing more refreshing than sunlight through flower petals.
Then I hop on my bike again, cycling down the back road for home, and the pleasures of our own garden. Cherry trees in bloom beside the studio window, where I sit sketching little boxes for a new collection that will be out in January.
Like Anne of Green Gables, "I
believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything
very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring
simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls
slipping off a string."
And this is just such a day in our little town.
