Mondays can sometimes be the hardest day of the week. There's catching up on e-mail accumulated over the weekend, staff meetings, and then the realization of all that needs to be accomplished in the five days ahead. Especially when the weather is as unseasonably warm as it was today, and all I wanted to do was get out on a trail somewhere to look for sparrows among the dead leaves and weeds.

But small pleasures can be found. The perfectionist workaholic in me appreciates the satisfaction of completing a day's tasks well and making a good start on the work week. And there are the day-long distractions of the titmice at my feeder, scolding each other with more aggressive vigor than one would expect in such tiny birds. Or the lingering citrus fragrance of fresh-peeled clementines that transports me from a dim office on a November afternoon to somewhere tropical and exotic...

Blue bowl, orange fruit.
Sweet clementines for my lunch--
perfumed taste of Spain.