Now Playing: The Decemberists, "The Picaresque", Track 1, "The Infanta".

Currently I'm eating Percy Pigs and enjoying them thoroughly. :o)

Rachel was up early this morning. I heard her run out to an APO service day, but of course, in typical Saturday morning fashion, I just fell asleep again until the light through the purple-blue sheets over the windows was too strong to ignore. It was so luxurious to be awake and actually enjoy being awake. I pattered around the flat, opening all the blinds so that the sunshine could fill the rooms, heating water for tea.

As soon as I finished my devotions, I bundled up and drove The Tank down to Woodward Park. The day was cold enough that I could see my breath as I walked over the park toward the tangle of neighborhoods between 21st and 31st, an area that houses not only Woodward Park with its rose garden but also the Tulsa Garden and Historical Societies and the Philbrook Art Museum.

I walked for an hour through broad neighborhood streets lined with old houses. Like a storybook. Real Thomas Kinkade material except for the dull brown lawns and bare black trees. Gorgeous houses, some of them squeezed together on small lots, adobe "haciendas" side-by-side with Dutch Colonial, Tudor, and New England clapboard. Many of the houses had sun porches, glowing, glassed-in, full of plants or hung with lacy curtains. Odd wee windows everywhere, scattered up and down over three stories, giving glimpses of designer living rooms and wrought iron banisters.

I walked along the front of the Philbrook. Beyond it were a couple of enormous estates set on several acres of parkland. One of them was composed of two wings joined by a big round tower. At the bottom of its sweep of lawn I found a creek running between stone banks, water flowing amber clear over stones--somehow it's fitting that this neighborhood would have water in its creekbed when nowhere else in Oklahoma right now has any water.

The trees were gorgeous, rows of big sycamores, their trunks vividly white in the noon sunshine. Oaks and pecans rearing massive trunks and branches above two- and three-storied houses. The sunlight had that strangely intense, pale quality about it of a cold day after it's just snowed (though last night the sleet was only thick enough to stay on the roofs of the apartments).

I listened to Pastor Donnelly's final lecture about Heaven: about the renewal there of heaven and earth, about the deep human relationships, about the eternal restful service of God. Walking through these palaced avenues and lanes, thinking about "In My Father's house are many mansions...."

I made a meandering circle, coming back north by the Tulsa Gardens property. A circle of five statues of Native American ballerinas stands at the corner of that property, and I stopped to gaze at the smooth lines of curving arms. Walked up through the rose gardens, dead and empty, tiny rosehips on the Ballerina bushes like red beads. Thick gnarled trunks bedded deep in pine needles and oak leaves.

As I was going back to the car, I noticed the greenhouses behind the Tulsa Garden Society building and randomly decided to investigate, exercising some of my mother's perennial curiosity. I turned the handle of the first one, and it opened--which was rather a surprise, since I'm used to doors being locked. Warmth and faint sweetness wrapped out toward me. Shutting the door, I went down a few steps. The door was overshadowed by an enormous broad-leafed fig tree. A pond was surrounded by potted water plants. There were the usual raised shelves full of specimens. A couple of avocado trees and a coffee arabica tree were growing at the far end of the greenhouse. I found a rosemary plant and brushed my fingers on the leaves, smelling the spiciness.

I went next door to the other greenhouse, an older greenhouse, almost a miniature version of the Palm House in Belfast, white Victorian wrought iron. This one was obviously more established. In the central room, a deep pool was sunk in the floor, with a graceful statue of a boy sitting in the middle, staring down at the water, surrounded by equisetum. A slender orange tree grew over the pool, its thin twining branches hung with tiny oranges and tinier white waxy flowers. In one of the wings, potted orchids were growing, fanned like peacocks' tails, all bright colors on stringy stems. In the other wing, desert plants, including an enormous spiky barrel cactus and a miniature baobab.

Relaxed by the warm humidity, I walked back to the car. On my way to campus, I stopped at Reasor's for eggs and baking powder. I picked up a sandwich from the caf and ate it with salt-and-vinegar crisps while reading for ENGL 4863 (poetry). After I ate, I sat cross-legged on the floor in the bay window with a cup of tea. The sun, slanting south, made a warm oblong on the floor. Eventually, I stretched out under a pashmina and dozed.

When I woke up, I was really woozy for some reason. I listened to Coldplay and Correlli and read more for ENGL. At about four o'clock, I got extremely bored, so I rang Daphne. She was at youth club but obliged me by chatting for about five minutes until her service cut out. Though I tried to ring back, a polite English voice told me every time that my call couldn't be connected. So I tried Rachel instead, and was rewarded with a veritable whoop of gladness on the other end.

After we finished talking, I rang my family. My parents were both trying to prepare the house for a visit by the grandparents tonight, so they didn't talk long, though my father gave me some advice about job/grad school. I made two batches of scones, listening to Correlli, taking the same visceral pleasure in kneading the dough as I had in making mud pies in milk bottle caps in the back yard....

I finally finished my reading for ENGL and decided to make tea since Rachel still wasn't back. We had had mushrooms left over from the curry last Sabbath evening, so I made an omelet with them. I was just sitting down to eat when Rachel came in. She heated up leftover mac-and-cheese and helped me finish the omelet.

Then we settled down to work. Finished Correlli, listened to Vivaldi and Bach. I worked on ENGL assignments. Finished the dreaded "self-assessment" assignment, though it's not much to read. Troilus and Criseyde now for independent study. Wrapped up in the black-and-yellow pashmina, Emmaline's Christmas gift last year, still smells faintly like barbecue sauce.