I got up at 5, per usual; took a shower, made coffee, brought Tom a cup, and now I sit here waking up, trying to get ready for our early morning outing. We need to be on the road by 6:30, to be at the opening of the tiny Palace Diner in Biddeford at 7, so we can make sure we snag seats at the counter. We first ate here a couple of weeks ago, on our way to Vermont, and it's a top-notch diner--compact, shabby, with a personable waitress and excellent food: really good coffee, some of the best fried potatoes I've ever had, delicious homemade hash. We decided then we needed to find a reason to come back. So our plan this morning is a big diner breakfast and then a quick drive south for a stroll through the salt marshes and beach at Laudholm Farm in Wells. It's early for migration sightings, but the seabirds should be busy and probably the hawks too. And we love walking on this protected seafront.

I'll be on the road again on Monday, heading north to Monson, so I'm eager to make this weekend ours. For two days neither of us has to work or be anywhere special. The house cleaning is done. The sheets and towels are washed. Tom's still coughing, but he's feeling less dragged down. So we're concentrating on little good times--a diner, a walk, a breath of sea wind.

On the kitchen counter sits a stoneware jar of pink hyacinths, just beginning to open. March arrives this week, and my garden will begin to awake, and the beauty of these greenhouse blooms stirs my blood a bit. Yesterday morning, after walking in the rain and snow showers, I stood outside in the yard, looking down into the leaf-mulched beds. I glimpsed the edge of tulip leaves, daffodil spikes, buds on the quince. A warm winter, an early spring. We live in uneasy times. I am unnerved by the weather, but still my eyes delight in green life.