Saturday, July 3rd

AT LAST we had some rain, really good gentle rain, for two days. Eleanor Blair was here, but she felt as I did the charm of the misty gray world, how green the greens look when wet, and we had a lovely time. She is one of the few people who come here who really looks at everything, and especially the flowers, so the whole house comes alive for me as she wanders around, seeing the furniture I brought from Judy’s, the new books, a painting, even my new blue enamel tea kettle that Laurie gave me for my birthday.

She is also a fine example of a woman who never married but has nothing of the “spinster” about her. Lying in bed this morning I thought about Lucy Stanton and how she too, unmarried, was a fulfilled person, long before the woman’s movement. Of course, she was an artist and Eleanor is not. What makes the spinster is fear of life.

It’s a great pleasure to go down to the annual and vegetable garden these days—for the first time since I came here, it is fairly tidy because of the hay mulch. Last year I was ashamed of the weeds, so thick that the beets never grew beyond an inch. Now the beets look healthy. We are having peas tonight when Bev and Mary-Leigh come for a cold salmon supper.

The roses are splendid now, but even better, the Japanese iris, as élancé and elegant as a heron (were it a bird not a flower). I have a deep purple one and a white one in a vase downstairs and catch my breath each time I go by.