This week of summer’s arrival, I move in and out of light as I go about the business of each day.

Kit is in town for the day. I’m alone, but not. The cats chase my shadow as I walk under the high, leafy canopy that shades our interior yard, emerging into an open carpet of mown meadow bounded by prairie alive with native grasses and Beard-tongue. This meadow belongs to robins and wood thrushes in my absence. Worms and bugs beware!

Boomerang Creek is a world I leave only with reluctance and love to share. "Come," I tell my friend Carole, who is eager for an afternoon of R&R. Nap on our breezy screened porch. Stroll the gardens. Savor a slice of plum and Bing cherry tart. Sample Shakir Hamoodi’s newest imported culinary offering from World Harvest Market - thumb-size South African piquanté red peppers stuffed with French feta. Stretch out in our hammock and let the breeze carry your thoughts to the terroir that produced those miraculous peppers.

Then walk past the orchard to the arching asparagus ferns at the north end of the vegetable garden. Sit on the garden bench until the robins and thrushes emerge from the prairie grasses. Stroll along the paths of the shade garden where filtered sun creates a haven for hostas but still allows sun-loving roses, ox-eye daisies, wild yarrow, lavender and rosemary to thrive.

There is a line up of slip-on shoes on the porch. I move about from inside to outdoors with a frequency that makes shoes with straps or strings a nuisance. In summer, I walk into my familiar pink rubber flip-flops without missing a beat as I exit the house onto our east porch en route to the gardens. In early morning, the wet meadow grasses feel cold on my bare toes. Dew on my freshly painted toenails magnifies a small cloud as it passes overhead. A tiny gold and black butterfly alights on the moving surface of my cherry red polished big toe, tastes nothing and flies on its way.

Friend Jane visits on another day, bringing with her a bottle of her husband Dick’s homemade strawberry wine. She instructs me on how he would like us to grade the contents, and I assure her Kit and I will carry out our assignment with pleasure. Jane and I are both writers - sisters in spirit and both with scars acquired from carefree childhood days of exposing our bodies to hours of summer sun.

I pour iced tea mixed with lemonade and serve each of us a slice of apricot tart. We lean across the table until we are a nose apart. I search the contours and ridges of her face, looking for evidence of a drama that has recently unfolded there. "I’ve grown to like my own scars," I tell Jane. "You’re beautiful. In time your scar will fade until only you see it there. It’s part of your history, a reminder of summers past when being tan was everything."

The next day, I visit the Scrivener Blueberry Farm near Wilton for the first time in three summers. When Alene and Scriv, the farm’s original owners, died in the summer of 2005, their daughter Carol and her husband, Greg, took over the operation. Carol and I spoke recently about the loss of a parent and how we continue to sense their presence - especially during quiet moments in the garden. "Come over this weekend," Carol said. "There aren’t many blueberries to pick this year because of the late frost, but whatever you harvest will be a treasure."

Sunday, I awake to a sky filled with unexpected light for such an early hour. The yellowish, predawn cast that moved to gray spoke of approaching rain. I carry Michael Ondaatje’s newest novel, "Divisidero," to a table on the porch, where I’ve set a cup of coffee and a bowl of blueberries.

I’ve been waiting for such a moment to begin this novel by this author who writes the way I think. You won’t find a linear story line in Ondaatje’s works. "I’m a cubist," he said in a recent interview. Like me, Ondaatje claims not to know where he is going at the onset of his writing. Rather, he follows and connects threads, weaving them back and forth in time.

As a soft rain begins to fall, the cats curl on and around the one wool throw I’ve left on the Adirondack chair for such moments. I sip my coffee slowly, savoring Ondaatje’s words. Sentences as delicious as Shakir’s tomato-red South African peppers. Language light as a butterfly on my brightly painted toenail. Images shaped by a magical weaving of words that takes my breath away.

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