And Louis Armstrong was singing beside the zucchini

On Sunday evening we picked blackberries in the park across the street and I baked them into scones the next morning. I felt the most appallingly Hallmarkian glow of contentment at the thought of living in a city where I can do this.

Furthermore, on Tuesday, 2 and I biked to the new farmer's market, not five blocks from our house, where vendors set up stands under colorful tents in a lot next to a well-tended community garden... and wait! there's more!

In the middle of this garden there grows an enormous mulberry tree, under which is arranged a semi-circle of straw bales covered with checkered tablecloths. Every market day at 4:30, a neighborhood mother with a real! English accent reads a Beatrix Potter book amid the bales. As soon as we arrived at the market, 2 put on a gauzy bit up dress-up fluff from the play tent and held the hand of the Book Mother to walk into the garden.

What did you expect? Of course the sky was azure and the clouds symmetrical!