What a perfectly lovely day! It is warm by Cape standards for this time of year, 60˚. I’m going outside to take books to my Little Library and fill the backyard bird feeders. It is a good day for a bit of fresh air.

I’m still wearing my winter cozies. I’m even wearing socks. When the sun goes down, it gets cold. Tonight will get down to the 30’s. That’s more like it for this time of year.

Cat update: nothing much has changed. Jack is downstairs except he often naps with Gwen in the former guest room, now the cat room. I put a new covering on Gwen’s bed to replace the furry, cracked vinyl tablecloth. The poor girl has lost a lot of hair on one side. I keep finding matted fur on the floor. I try to clean her fur a bit every night, and it does feel better when I pat her. Gwen still hisses at Henry. He doesn’t care. Henry is howling right now at the front door. I’d go check why, but usually I see nothing. As for Henry, other than the barking, he is doing well. He wags his tail end when I talk to him, and he is always glad to see me when I get home from errands. He loves to be scratched and patted.

When I was a kid, days like today made me feel almost joyful. I could unzip my jacket. At school, I could leave the hat and mittens in the cloak room, and best of all, I could go outside in the warmth and run around at recess with sheer abandonment, the sides of my unzipped coat billowing as I ran. I remember the school yard, also a parking lot on Sundays, had sand on it making it a bit slippery so skidding was common, sometimes by choice. The sand came from town trucks spewing it from the sides to try to keep the snow from hardening on the roads and parking lots.

After school, in the late afternoon, on a day like today, it was warm enough for me to go out and play or ride my bike. The day was lasting longer and longer so the streetlights came on later and later. I’d go inside in time to watch The Mickey Mouse Club before dinner. I always sang along, M-I-C-K-E-Y MOUSE. Even now those songs reverberate in my memory drawers, permanently etched. “And now it’s time to say good-bye.”

Today is warm despite the ocean. It is 59˚ but there is an every now and then cold wind. The sun is hidden but bright behind the clouds. I managed to do all my errands. I even made it to the dump. My trunk and back seat were filled with trash bags, cardboard, papers and magazines. It was cold there. The wind tore across the flat, open areas.

At night, parts of the cape are quite dark. Streetlights are sometimes far between. One of my favorite roads has almost no lights at all. It passes cranberry bogs on both sides of the road. In one of those bogs, every Christmas, a lit tree stands in the middle of the bog strung with ropes. When I pass during the daylight from season to season, I get to watch the changes in the bog. In the late fall, the bogs are flooded to protect them from the cold winds of winter. As it gets warmer, berries first appear. In a short while the bogs become red with fruit. They are harvested in the fall when the bogs are flooded again. A machine with a driver beats the bog with a paddle to stir the berries so they float to the top. Workers wearing waders move the berries toward a chute so they can be harvested. I always stop to watch a harvest.

When I was in Ghana, Peace Corps vehicles were Land Rovers, the sort which trekked across the Sahara and were chronicled in National Geographic. They always seemed exotic to me, the perfect vehicle for Africa. I remember riding up the coast from Half Assini to Accra after our mid-term conference. The ride felt almost dream-like. There I was in Africa in a Land Rover riding along the ocean road passing palm trees and family compounds, kiosks selling all sorts of goods and people selling food. I remember giant snails sold from baskets, fruits especially oranges and pineapples being hawked by women and meat on a stick cooking over a charcoal fire, its species unknown. If I ever hit the jackpot, I’ll buy myself an old Land Rover and refurbish it. I’ll feel like an adventurer even on Cape roads.