An Extra-Ordinary Spring Saturday

Saturday the 10th of September was one of those magic spring days. 

It started like this:

It was the kind of day where the sun is beautifully warm and the breeze is playful and joyous. 

The kind of day where, when LittleOne and I went out onto the deck in the morning and the breeze ran up to say hello, we each instinctively, impulsively inhaled and exclaimed about how lovely the day was! 

The kind of day that LittleOne said felt just like the beach. 

The kind of day where the air is watermelon-scented, and you just want to both bottle it and let it soak in your very cells forever.  

That kind of spring day.

We saw the first hibiscus flower in our garden in a lovely shade of pink-red that was just slightly more deep pink than red. We saw bees merrily visiting the white-and-pink-edged blossoms all over our prolific lemony-lime tree.

We saw a kookaburra bird come and perch on the arbor in the garden. It gave a couple of its deep-throated chuckles, but didn't break out into its full song. The chuckles got an answer from another nearby kookaburra, and also attracted a bossy magpie which came and hovered brazenly right next to the kookaburra. The kookaburra flew to next door's washing line, followed by the bossy magpie - with reinforcements. They hopped at the edges of the mango tree close to the washing line, a constantly shifting bossy presence.

 (I swear, it seems that all the other birds seem to gang up on the kookaburras. They hold their own pretty well, though, thank goodness!)

Standing on the deck, I saw a blue-faced honeyeater bird fly the length of the garden at my eye level, a movement of a long, smooth swoop, its golden-olive back and wing feathers glorious in dappled light.

We played with water on the warmth of the deck and gave several toys a bath. 

We played bubbles, sending them flying into the warm air and watching them being carried far away by the breeze.

The winds made for beautiful cloud patterns the whole day.

We realised the path of the sun is changing again, and the garden which remains mostly in shade through the winter, is becoming bathed in pools and pockets of sunshine again.

We popped out to the whole fruit-and-vegetable markets, which I call the bazaar markets in a nod to my Mauritius childhood where all the open air fruit and vegie markets are called bazaars. (The plural 's' is silent in Mauritius Creole and French.) We went to our preferred market gardener stall, who often gives us a free something extra. On Saturday, it was an extra bunch of bok choy. We got bananas, strawberries, blueberries and raspberries and talked about fruit salad and smoothies on the way home. 

We got a bag of salted caramel popcorn and ate some on the way home.

We bought a pot plant. LittleOne chose this lovely daisy. I'm not a gardening person, so will see if I can help it thrive.

When we got home, we greeted a happy Indi and threw open all the (screened) doors and windows. While unpacking our treasure trove of fruit, the TV's chill music channel moved from a song with a medium fast offbeat tempo to one which felt as if it was an underwater song. Next door in the kitchen, LittleOne and I moved from grooving to the medium-fast song, to spontaneously doing slow-motion dancing to the underwater song. LittleOne won the dancing with a slow wriggle into a crouch and then back up again without any bending forward.

We polished off one of the punnets of raspberries in one go. We added plain Greek yoghurt to some of them and did that thing where you painstakingly fill the raspberry with yoghurt, then eat. Yum!

LittleOne got focused on a hangnail on a forefinger and demanded a plaster. Knowing that plasters get applied and discarded with too much frequency, and trying to delay the fate of yet another plaster, I got an unopened plaster and drew a smiley face at one end and a grumpy face at the other end. It worked as a distraction, but not for very long. LittleOne got the plaster - again, not for very long. I also got lots of ink smears on my fingers from the leaking pen.

Having woken up too early, LittleOne took a late afternoon nap, and I took Indi for a longer-than-usual walk. At one point, on a path that ran east to west, I looked right to see this in the west:

Without moving, I looked left to see this in the east:

And this became the night:

It was one of those days where you feel the gods and goddesses of the sun and moon and stars all decided to throw their common cares away for a day, and to just soak in joy. 

We on our little blue earth feel this joy, and savour it like blessings. Making many little moments of perfection all around us.

Here's to many more beautiful, extra-ordinary days.

Du fond du coeur x