Friday, February 14th

A BEAUTIFUL DAY! Zero when I went down this morning at a little after six … such a peaceful gray and rosy sunrise, the Isles of Shoals floating as they sometimes seem to do. Winter has really come at last, with below-zero weather, or snow, every day. There is nothing I like better.

Yesterday as I drove across the causeway en route to get the mail, a kingfisher flew low right in front of me. I have only seen one once before. Birds are an important part of my life here, especially in winter. The feeders are outside the closed-in porch where I have my meals, read, and look at TV when I am downstairs. Lately a flock of evening grosbeaks comes and goes among the chickadees, three sparrows, and goldfinches. A pair of downy woodpeckers and a pair each of small and large nuthatches are regulars, a few jays (they have been depleted since the capillary disease last year that destroyed hundreds). One or two starlings and/or grackles show up now and then. Both red squirrels (enchanting) and gray (huge!) devour tons of seed. On these very still, very cold days the constant motion has a tonic effect, a little like music in the air, all those wings. It would be deathly still without them.

As I look down from this study window, I see below the terrace a charming lacing in loops and circles of Tamas and Bramble’s tracks through the snow. Beyond the low wall that defines the garden, the field is untrammeled, dazzling white. And the ocean now dark bright blue, sequined by the sun in a great swath to the south toward the islands.

Why is blue the color? Does any other excite in the same way? Blue flowers—gentians in an Alpine meadow, delphinium in the summer garden, forget-me-nots, bachelor’s buttons among the annuals—always seem the most fabulous, the most precious. And I’m afraid I have always been drawn to blue-eyed people! Lapis lazuli; the much paler marvelous blues used by Fra Angelico (“Fra Angelico blue,” I have heard it called by my mother); the very blue shadows on snow; bluebirds. I thought of this as I drove across the causeway when I saw the kingfisher, his flash of blue, and rejoiced to see blue water after the gray days.

I am struggling still with the portrait of Louise. Sometimes I think it is just plain no good. But how touched and charmed I was when one of her blue slips of paper slid out from the poems, and proved to be a list of all the flowers in one of “May’s bouquets”!