I slept late and had a leisurely morning so I’m behind my time. I even stood on the deck for a bit to watch the dogs and take in the beauty of the day. It is sunny but light rain is predicted for later. It is in the low 60’s but feels warmer.

Pine pollen is covering every bit of my little corner of the world. My blue car is now a yellow green. The deck and even the flowers are covered in pollen. My allergy is making a mess of me. I cough whenever I do anything requiring breathing. My nose needs constant blowing. This is my least favorite time of year.

The town where I grew up had every sort of tree. I remember up the hill from where I lived was a chestnut tree. Sometimes we pelted the chestnuts at each other. They really hurt. An old elm tree with a giant trunk was across the street from my house. It came down in a hurricane, split at the trunk. My father took us outside during the eye of the storm to check out the tree. The rest of the trunk and all the branches were across the road. I climbed through the smaller branches. The other trees I remember were the red maples and the amazing color of their leaves. Those were the leaves we ironed in wax paper to save them at their brightest. We did have a few pine. The white pines were tall and had fluffy needles. I don’t remember their pollen covering surfaces. Maybe, unlike here on the cape, they were few. The oak trees were many, maybe the most of all. The lilac is a bush but grows so tall and full it might just qualify as a baby tree. The houses around my street had tall lilac bushes. The purple flowers smiled divine. My house had a few trees in the side yard, some sort of a fir tree. They were young trees, not every tall. When I drove pass my old house many years later, I was amazed. The trees are now taller than the house.

I have an empty dance card until Tuesday, unless you count a dump run on Sunday. To keep busy, I may have to do a few chores. I swept the downstairs a couple of days ago and ended up with a dust ball bigger than a soccer ball. Today I noticed the dust clumps are back. I feel a bit like Sisyphus but with a broom instead of a rock.

The morning is perfect. The sky is that deep blue which almost defies description, the sun is bright, and there is a slight breeze. When I asked Alexa the weather for today, she said light showers. I didn’t believe her given the beauty of the morning so I asked Google the same question. Google said cloudy with light rain. He got the cloudy part wrong, but he did agree with Miss Alexa about the showers. It is 63°.

I took Henry to the vet’s on Tuesday to have his leg checked. He has been limping on his right front leg. The vet checked his paw and felt all round his leg then she took him out back so she would watch him walk. When she came back, she did he did not limp at all. I was a bit flabbergasted. She gave him pain pills and told me to use them at my discretion. When we got home, Henry limped to the house. He is still limping.

When I was a kid, every day was just about the same. I had breakfast, hot cereal or eggs in winter and cold cereal in the warmer months. Breakfast was always ready on school days when I got down stairs to the kitchen. I didn’t have to choose school clothes. I wore the same uniform, a blue skirt, white blouse and a blue cowboy tie, for eight years. My only fashion flairs were shoes and socks. Mostly my shoes were sturdy and meant to last all year unless I grew out of them or something catastrophic happened. It never did. On cold days I wore knee socks, on warm days, ankle socks. I never complained about having to wear a uniform. That was just the way it was, the norm when I was a kid, just because.

My plate was expanded when I went to Ghana. It wasn’t just Ghanaian food. It was also Lebanese food and Indian food. I remember thinking how exotic the Maharaja restaurant was to me, whose only foray into exotic food was spaghetti and meatballs and fried rice, Chinese spare ribs and pork strips. The restaurant was on the second floor of a building near the post office. It was decorated exactly how I had imagined an Indian restaurant should look like. We sat on floor pillows. I don’t even remember what I ate. I do know I developed a taste for Indian food. Small corner Lebanese restaurants were common in Ghana. I used to eat at a place called Talahl’s, right near the Peace Corps office. That was the first time I ever had hummus. I never asked what was in it. I just tried it. The hummus was served in a circle on a flat plate. It had a small amount of sesame oil in the middle and was ringed with red pepper. The pita bread was large and freshly made. I remember being told to take a piece of bread and scoop it through the hummus after running it through the oil and making sure it got some pepper. I still love hummus. I’m not so sure if I would have eaten it if I knew about the chickpeas and tahini.