Every morning I pack one of my quilted bags with my needs of the day. I bring it with me to the garden. It could be my glasses, dog cookies, notepad, and sometimes, perhaps, an apple. Always my phone. I then leave the bag in the greenhouse while I putter in the garden.

I don’t know why I call it a phone, I never use it to actually talk to people. Certainly, no one ever calls me. Well, that’s not true, a friend called me yesterday and E will call me when I can’t find where I left the phone. Other than that the only people who have called me recently, other than the kids on Mother’s Day, were foreign agents warning me that, due to a tax error, I could be going to jail. I never actually talk to them for long but I am sure they are just trying to be helpful. It is quite surreal to be sitting in my garden on an island in the middle of nowhere and have calls from such a wide variety of international well wishers. You don’t believe me? This is a picture of the actual recent callers on my phone.

Yesterday, along with my packed quilted bag, I took a bunch of cardboard up the hill to burn at the burn pile. I also grabbed some wood bits from the studio and dropped the garbage on the burn pile next to the greenhouse. I lit the fire and then went about my business watering all the vegetables.

Everything in the garden is thriving. The vegies are green and healthy, the peonies are in full bloom and the roses have started to blossom. It looks great up there and it is a very pleasant place to sit and think. One thought I had was that I should take a picture of my new rose. I went to the greenhouse to fetch my phone from the bag and it wasn’t there.

To err is human, and it seems that each and every day here I prove how human I am. I had put my quilted bag on the fire with the garbage. Burned the dog cookies, and the notepad, not one, but two pairs of glasses, and my phone.

Once I dug the melted black lump out of the ashes and gave it a chance to cool down, we washed the melted plastic glass frames off it and restarted it. I am available once again to receive calls. Hopefully fewer from Latvia and more from my kids. I should see if Apple wants to pay me

for a testimonial