Happy Friday evening, one and all! The apartment is clean, dinner is in the oven, the windows are open, and there is a smell of rain in the air. I've got Vivaldi on the radio and, just for a moment, all is right in the world. This week's warm-up coaxed the tulips in our building's courtyard to open up and greet the sun. There are gentle aspects of NYC that I'll never quite reconcile with its overall feeling of being a human meat grinder, and the explosion of springtime flowers in Queens is one of them. I'm grateful our super put in extra bulbs last fall even though it would have also been nice to have our oven fixed, bathroom tile patched, door painted, black mold treated, and window screens put on. But hey, the flowers are beautiful! And speaking of flowers, last week our whole little apartment became a garden: It feels good to be surrounded by green again. And the herbs have already become my best friends ...