(Oh, goodness, I've walking hither and yon ferrying poets around this week for the StAnza Poetry Festival, wrote this several days ago, and am just posting it now. Apologies for the late post. And, happy weekend!).

Lately, I've woken up to our little awning being spattered with rain, and proceeded to watch drops flicking our patio all. day. long. Concentric circles form and fade in puddles everywhere, and the question flopping around in my mind is: can I trade my wellies for flippers? Then I could just waddle along to the grocery store for dishwasher tablets instead of splashing, being glad for the rain and not caring about looking like a duck No such luck. I have realized once again: my mood is much too dependent on my circumstances, on {right now, far too little} colour around me. And while I do not need these instants of colour to be complete, I go on searching for them in the puddles. They point me outwards. They give me joy. They are there. And so, here are some instants of colour snatched from the ever-rainy Tueswednesday:

We've had the purples and yellows, but our garden's grabbed some orange at long last.

Meanwhile, we're anticipating the colors we'll see in the light of the sun in {shhh, Italy} soon, not soon enough.

(I'm glad I won't have to look for internet cafes to email this guy called Walker the whole trip.) Bliss, I'll be holding his hand (and, I imagine like my trip two years ago, eating mountains of confetti-coloured foods).

This Tueswednesday the refridge went from minimalist to chock-full-o-vitamins with the arrival of the ever-delightful farm goodies. It's like a veggie crayon box!

(Those veggies came with a voucher for a free soil spa hand treatment with a veggie scrub brush. Goodbye, dirt! Goodbye, stress!)

Thanks to some ribbons of carrots and some sauteed leeks in this cannellini bean and leek panzanella, colour has been swiped across our kitchen,

and in the light orange of the earthly-smooth parsnip-potato-carrot cream soup, and gluten free scones I stirred up today. Yum-a-lum!

This Tueswednesday, quirky Skype gave me free conference calling and therefore a skype-a-rama with high school friends in New Jersey and British Columbia. That's a lotta slices of time zone cake!

This Tueswednesday, I scissored up a colourless draft and sewed it back together. I pulled words out of my golf caddy like links and cleekmaker, leather and Open, and wrote an article about a golf museum

for the Visit St Andrews blog. Let me tell you, golf has some lovely honey-colours and tweed hats goin' on.

Joy, joy, today I visited a darling new cheese shop and I completely want to be a mouse scuttling through the creamy paradise and yellow homeyness.

All these colours have certainly not been as crayon-organized to me these rainy days, but perhaps that's why I write. To see the colour that is there. To see that although I could live without it, it is a gift to see. Writing is seeing. Sometimes I think I need to dream of Italy for colour. But, oh, hello! It's right here on my screen.

Nonetheless, I dream on of Italy.