1. Hanna Farm. It’s the name of our neighborhood, which in the 1800s was a farm where they raised rye and something else I can’t remember. This picture is the field at the end of our street. I love living here — so close to all the good parks and hiking, only about a mile from Old Town, only six blocks from one of my favorite humans, just down the road from Beaver’s Market, and super close to CSU (which doesn’t matter anymore since I don’t work there!).

2. Things that give me hope. I try to practice the Buddhist principle of letting go of both hope and fear, one pulling you into some imagined experience you believe will be exactly what you want and the other causing you to run away from something you think will be bad, both states pulling you out of the current moment, distracting you from what’s really going on, taking you out of your actual experience. That said, sometimes I need to hope. I read a line in a story in The Sun magazine yesterday that said, “just because it is all so very, very unfair does not mean there is not still great hope in the world” and it made me feel better about the state of things. Then there was a report of a swarm of ladybugs so big it registered on the National Weather Service radar, and then this morning in one of the ponds, this waterlily that typically produces 1-3 flowers has 11 blooms.

3. Morning walks. This morning will be our last along the river. It is rising because of snow melt and the flooding is predicted to be some of the worst this time around, but the real reason we’ll have to avoid this area until much later this summer is because of the mosquitoes.

4. The light this morning was extra special.

5. My tiny family. For some reason, I didn’t take many pictures of them this week.

Bonus joy: bird song in the morning, hummingbirds flying over our yard, my peonies getting ready to bloom, long naps, strawberries from our garden, hanging out with Mikalina and Chloe’, good TV, good books, good music, clean sheets, having nothing on my schedule so I can do whatever I want.