Late Saturday afternoon

A peaceful afternoon, with sunshine and a breeze. We visited the community garden (lots of abandoned plots) and the "O'Donahue Family Farm"--wonder who the O'Don0hues, who preferred to have their name on a farm with chickens and leeks rather than a big fancy building housing gym equipment or computers, are.

I could move into the chicken coop--it would be a squeeze, but a bed of hay and a nice weedy field to peck in, and companions whose political opinions are limited to cut-cut-cut. We had a conversation leaning over the electric fence, which fortunately wasn't plugged in. Anyway, half the chickens had escaped to the surrounding field, and after we wondered if we should get them back, we saw a sign: "Don't worry about us, we can get ourselves back in. We are at Stanford after all."

This is my sort of place, with a bench in the shade of an old, spreading live oak tree, and stink of manure, and the little sounds hens make when they are foraging.  A few bikes off in the corner of the field, a shed covered in a sheet of  plastic with tools and seedlings, some wheelbarrows (none of them red) and a densely-planted band of orange and yellow marigolds. I could have settled down with a book.