Yesterday was glorious. It was long sleeve shirt weather at over 60˚. I did some errands with the window down. The air smelled of flowers. They are blooming everywhere. Color has finally pushed winter away. The flag by my front steps says Welcome Spring.

Today is cloudy, and rain is predicted for this afternoon. The temperature will be around 60˚. I love that the low will be 45˚. Not so long ago I would have been happy for a high of 45˚.

When I was a kid, I loved spending time in my room on a rainy or chilly day. I’d get cozy and read the afternoon away. Back then we had classics to read. Robert Louis Stevenson was a favorite. I remember reading almost all of them. Where we vacationed in Maine one year, there was a sun room in the house where we were staying. It had windows all around, wicker furniture and a filled bookcase. That’s where I first read A Child’s Garden of Verses. I had found a treasure. The poems were happy. They were about me, about me being a kid. Sometimes I read the poems out loud. The rhyming was almost joyful. It was like skipping but in my mind. I was amazed that poetry could be such fun.

One summer my friend and I traveled. My favorite stop was Edinburgh. I walked the Royal Mile with my travel book in hand. We stopped at Deacon Brodie’s Tavern. Deacon Brodie was the inspiration for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I felt as if I was at a holy place.

I like windows. When I travel, I love looking out windows and imagining. At Dickens house, I remember stopping at a landing between two flights of stairs and looking out the window. I knew Dickens probably did the same. We were connected over time.

My favorite windows were at Machu Picchu. They had an odd shape, a trapezoidal shape, which I found out later was a typical Incan window. Looking out, I could see the odd shaped mountain across from Machu Picchu. I knew the views hadn’t changed since the Incas. We were connected over time.

From my back window I can see the yard. The trees have grown over the years. Some have died. One fell during the wind storm of not so long ago. It leans against the fence. I think of my yard as a measure of time. It and I have grown old together.

Last night it rained. The morning is cloudy and damp. More rain is expected. It could reach 60˚. Today’s low will be in the 40’s, the high temperature of not so long ago. Maybe spring is making its mark, defining the weather and pushing through the dampness, the browns and the grey. I do see more flowers every morning. It was two hyacinths today, both of them a deep rose. The mornings are noisy now, filled with the songs of birds. When I got the paper, I saw a cardinal couple probably looking for the perfect tree. The red was bright against the wild rose bush just beginning to get buds. There is just something so wonderful about the spring.

Yesterday I got bought a pineapple. It is still a bit unripe. When I was a kid, I never saw a pineapple outside of a can where it came in slices with a sugary syrup. In Ghana, a bowl of cut fruit was my lunch every day. I ate bananas, oranges, mangos, pineapples and pawpaw (papaya here) when it was in season. On the road, I often bought oranges. The aunties selling the fruit always cut off the top of the peel with a razor blade. I’d suck out all the juices then turn the orange inside out to eat the pulp. I remember those oranges were the sweetest I’d ever tasted. They were green. I often wondered why they were still called oranges.

The first time I saw a Guinea fowl I didn’t know what it was. I wasn’t quite sure if it was beautiful or ugly. They have small heads and big bodies. Their feathers are spotted. My first thought was Guinea fowl are off-beat relatives of a chicken. I was wrong. They are singular birds, and they can really fly. They wandered all around the school compound eating bugs. They have a funny run and are quick, hard to catch. I never saw a baby Guinea fowl. Sometimes I bought Guinea eggs. They were hard to break.

Okra and garden eggs were two vegetables I hadn’t ever seen. I liked okra except it was slimy. I only had it in stews. Since then, I’ve found out to de-slime. Cooking them with tomatoes is an easy way. Garden eggs, nyadua in Twi, were white though some had green stripes. They were baby eggplants. I also ate them in stews. One of my friends grows them in her garden.

If I cooked a Ghanaian meal here, it would have kelewele, jollof rice, chicken, a light soup and a green sauce I never learned how to make. I’d eat dinner with my right hand, the Ghanaian way.