Paradise Includes Grapefruits

Saturday afternoon. I sit with my laptop in a wicker lounge chair next to the swimming pool, the surface of which undulates in tiny microvibrations to create a turquoise virtual image of the Cat's Paw that sits atop the cinder block fence in back of it.

I'd run down the batteries on the laptop during the flight down from Denver yesterday evening, so I need juice. We'd left DIA just about sundown and chased the twilight all the way to Phoenix.

On the way, sitting in a window seat, I used the Southwest flight tracker to keep track of our progress. We passed directly over the route of some of my perambulations in the Bimmer last March---U.S. Highway 550 across northwestern New Mexico, and several towns in eastern Arizona where I had stayed in motels.

It's a perfect metaphor for the kind of upward progress I have striving to maintain---to soar over roads that once took days and weeks to traverse.

Out on the patio, Heather, my hostess here in Scottsdale, finds an outlet hidden in the landscaping for the laptop so that I can web surf in the warm sun.

Red is off in the corner of the yard, "perfecting her migrant worker skills" by picking grapefruits from the tree.

Grapefruits have always been my favorite fruit, since I was a kid. A place where they grow on trees another perfect metaphor, the kind I like to cultivate.