The good life

The s.o. has spent the morning building us a beautiful garden arch--sort of a doorway-sized arbor. He built it completely out of scrap wood left over from the remodeling. Not long ago, he built a potting table out of extra wood from the porch construction. (When we bought the house, the front porch literally did not exist; it had rotted away and there was no way to approach the front door. We hired a building contractor to jack up the extant porch roof and build from scratch underneath it.)

The little arbor is gorgeous. And FREE! What a clever guy the s.o. is.

Enough gloating about that. Now I'll gloat about this:

I received a letter today from my friend M. She's a true soulmate type of friend, who enjoys all the same things and (unfortunately for her!) shares the same slackerish tendencies as me. Somehow, though, she manages to be a true old-fashioned superliterate type--the kind of person who has read every book ever printed and writes hilarious yet deep handwritten letters on beautiful but not flowery stationery.

Today's letter included two pages of fun and informative updates about her and her husband, plus a recipe clipped from an old issue of Metropolitan Home. The recipe is for quince sauce (as in applesauce, but made from quinces). It has port wine in it and can be canned. How excellent is that?

M. knows me well. I need to write her a letter. Or even better, I need to go visit her.

It's such a wonderful thing to receive a letter like this. I need to strive to be more like M.