I’m back to staring out my study window at the wide expanse of green grass (in my neighbor’s yard) dotted with dandelions (in mine), appreciating the chance to observe a sparrow pecking at dandelion seeds (please, eat them all!) and a squirrel popping down the game trail from the peonies by the fence to the deck. I’ve particularly enjoyed the restfulness of this scene over the last week, when I’ve been nursing a cold. I regret having missed the period of a few days when my view would have been pink, thanks to the magnolia tree outside my window. However, the lilac on the other side of the house is doing its best to make up.

Before the cold, I was away for a couple of weeks, in two lovely French cities one of which was Paris. I’ve never before visited Paris in April, and it was pretty much all it’s cracked up to be. Although there was often rain in the afternoons, the temperatures were decent, and Sir John and I were lucky and managed to arrive at museums just before the rain started. We didn’t see as much as we would have liked, thanks in part to the onset of aforesaid illness, but staring out at a classically Hausmannian building was certainly a change from my green fields. I was a little surprised at how little I could make out of the interiors and their inhabitants, even when the lights were on and curtains open: the angle, the trees, the wrought-iron railings on the balconies, all conspired against a really clear view. I also thought that differences in layout and furniture might make it harder to “read” a Parisian interior, for an American used to American lifestyles and ideas of what is or ought to be on display.

Life is so different in a place where you can go downstairs and find shops, restaurants, banks, a post office, a drugstore, all without crossing a street. (OK, there are the four flights of stairs to take into account!) Sir John said he did not at all miss driving while we were away. My car was in the shop while we were gone, and I was glad to get it back, and also to have the green vista again; nonetheless, I know what he means, and I definitely enjoyed the convenience of truly dense city life. In some ways, our last house was the worst of all possible worlds: in a town dense enough for neighbors to be a nuisance (not dense enough for them to rely on city-style pretence that neighbors don’t exist), yet sprawly enough to make a car necessary (but slow, so slow, with all the stoplights and stop signs). Although we have to drive a lot where we are now, it’s easier driving, with big multi-lane streets and well-timed stoplights.

It does make me think. Where do I really want to be? Maybe what I have is perfect, a country-ish life with vacations in cities, the other way around from how Parisians live.