into the warmth of Benicia in Bloom we made it Monday evening to

the Farmshop at Larkspur Landing for some excellent company, unmemorable wine [my bad, curious to choose their “tap wine”] and very good food to celebrate a dear friend’s 80th…a most enjoyable evening although the extra half hour of stopped traffic on the trip home [seemingly inevitable on I-80] somewhat dimmed the glow, oh.  Otherwise it was a mild and sunny week

albeit with winds and despite many mornings devoted to Vehicle Maintenance the afternoons

remained free to reread Bonnie Olin’s Owyhee Journals while [chaise] lounging, a very enjoyable

form of vicarious adventure evocative of a much beloved place while out under the roses.

Saturday brought the fiercest weather in recent memory, more like February showers comin’ in

in May than April’s

which fortunately blew through before we had to take another trip across the Great Waters,

this one to San Rafael to wander vaguely seeking parking and then,

even more misdirected, seeking the Doclands Film Festival…fortuitously arriving at the theatre just in time for Lisa Landers’ “Giants Rising” in which our good friend Sarah plays the essential role of Artist.  A most complex and engaging documentary, really, with an afterparty hosted

[appropriately] by the Save the Redwoods League after which we crossed back in brilliant rain-washed light to try dinner at the Cafe at the Inn at Benicia Bay which was friendly, spendy

and assaultively salted. But good to try to know what it was. Sunday allowed us the morning to

work before heading out again, this time to Richmond for friend Emily’s open studio prior to her

sending a selection of her meticulously strange [many enticingly small- scaled] paintings away to a show in New York. A bright sunny afternoon with many old friends of her parents’

generation [as are we] in attendance, engaging works with little children scampering

about the understory until it was time to go home to let the dogs out and stuff like that on an uneventfully quiet Cinco de Mayo, 2024.