Fitful spring weather is all the more exciting when you’ve ventured out in your socks to count the blossoms that have formed on the blueberry bushes and to check whether the carrots are sprouting. (They are!) Down comes the first spatter, but isn’t that a hint of rainbow forming? Where? Why? We shelter on the neighbors’ porch, improvising seats among the firewood, the six of us crafting silly sentences of words that rhyme with stump, talking about sun and rain all at the same once, squawking odes to the plush fur and convenient stature of Corgi dogs, speculating on the pleasures of Meyer lemons in cocktails. (They make a splendid whiskey sour, it turns out, and simple syrup made with coconut sugar is a perfectly good idea. You want an ounce and a half of whiskey, an ounce of Meyer lemon juice, and less than half an ounce of the syrup. We don’t own a shaker so we just dropped in a couple of ice cubes and stirred. You won’t be sorry if you do the same.)

This was Monday. We didn’t talk about the tragedy with the littles amongst us. (Ada happened to have selected, that morning, a beautiful shirt with ABC’s on it from a new batch of hand-me-downs: BOSTON RED SOX.) But in the face of all that’s been wrong with the world this week, that convivial moment, happenstance in the golden light amid the raindrops, was especially good.