I’m sure some people live like this all the time, but this is all very Fresh Air Fund for me. Thumbs up all around for country living: a bowl of Fruit n’ Fibre topped with Mamie Nova lychee yoghurt while the roosters mosey across the lawn in the dewy morning. Shelling walnuts at the kitchen table and then, not two hours later, espresso and a slice of walnut cake warm from the oven, with Stevie Wonder playing in the big room. Thin slices of pain bis slathered with demi-sel butter, and then dipped into a bowl of day-old vegetable soup, still good, and sweet from the leeks.

Late this afternoon, Maud came in with sweetpeas from her grandmother’s garden. I shelled them at the marble table on the porch out back, and they are being steamed, with lettuce and shallots and carrots, for dinner tonight. There is a gigot of lamb in a thick cast-iron pot on the stove, and all around me the light, delicious smell of mint just picked.

For later—because there is always a later—India and I have made a chocolate-apricot tart, which, as chocolate-apricot tarts do best, is sitting pretty.

Quelqu’un veut du café?