Small Pleasures

- Warming nightgowns and socks on the radiators in the winter

- Making the perfect cup of tea in the morning (cream just right, sugar just right)

- Robins singing in the trees overhead just before twilight

- Waking up and realizing I have the day off

- Letters from dear ones arriving in the mail

- Sitting down to write

- Seeing an antique bookcase up the road with a paper taped to it that says:  "F-R-E-E"  

- Curling up on the couch or out on the verandah and opening a new book

- Finding new blossoms on the miniature rosebush.. pale pink and heartbreaking

- Waking up to the brittle cold of autumn and a brillant sun flooding the front windows  

 

- Being followed around the garden by a small white butterfly who then lands on my arm.  (Hard to say which of us was the more surprised!) 

- Making the first fire of the season and then settling down in a chair with a shawl

- Filling the cottage with the aroma of baking bread on a winter afternoon

- Pulling chairs into a field at a friend's farm and watching a summer sunset.  (I learned two things: the moon is more beautiful in the countryside, and it IS possible to eat warm blueberry crisp and vanilla ice cream in the pitch dark.)