A groggy, early departure to the woods in surprise sunshine. I will meet my friend in the meadow. She will walk from her house with her dogs. I am overtired but glad to be outdoors and glad to be smelling spring air. We reach the meadow at the same time from different directions without any advance planning. Serendipity. We know where we want to be on a Sunday morning. Our shared woods. We climb Rocky Narrows with the dogs, examine the deep green moss on the massive trunks of trees and talk of our lives and relationships and work. I show her the slippers coming into bloom on the place I call Lady Slipper Row. I don’t take many pictures while we’re together. I can’t focus the way I do when I’m alone and the plants seem to whisper to me to come close. But, after we part, and I’m walking home alone with the dogs, I stop to appreciate a dogwood blooming wildly in the meadow, and the cinnamon fern that’s golden by the side of the trail. Because I am overtired this past week I am cycling through bouts of irritability. They flash in and out and I am mostly successful in not biting people’s heads off. The gentle cinnamon fern seems to read my state of mind and offers beauty and mystery and comfort. Yes, a plant is medicine, even if only ingested through the eyes. Tonight, just before I am to host a webinar online for the IWWG involving a number of panelists and participants, my computer went into a crazy malfunction. Because I dropped it on the sidewalk shortly after Frank’s surgery while going for coffee with my dear friend. It seemed fine. But the screen broke and tonight it kind of exploded. I had some moments of irriitability the cinnamon plant couldn’t heal. But I managed to use Frank’s computer and ran the webinar and all was well and now I cannot spell irritble accurately or fix it and so I am letting it go. My daughter’s dear one graduated from Skidmore yesterday, and his mother kindly sent me this lovely picture of them. Their story, their relationship, began in the first weeks of college together when they met there. And even though my daughter transferred - and will graduate soon herself - they are still together, these four remarkably fast years later. I remember the sweet text I first got from her, hinting about a young man she had met. With a beard. He bought her a candy bar from a vending machine when he intuited that she needed one in those first weeks of adjusting to college life. They’ve been taking good care of each other ever since. Frank came home from the hospital one week ago today. I am not giving him candy bars. But I am taking good care. His friend arrived at 6:30 am as usual to drive them to their morning AA meeting of over 30 years. Frank called us his “A” team. I’m grateful to be on this team. I was working on my poem for tomorrow night when this machine broke. I will find a way to get my poem revised and printed. It’s not up to the machine, and the machine can’t stop me from writing what I need to write. Goodnight.