We are enjoying what I consider to be perfect California weather on our vacation: mostly cloudy, mixed with rain showers, with the occasional touch of blue sky. Everything is green, the fruit trees are in bloom, the daffodils are blooming. I overheard someone today talk about how cold it is, and thought about New Bedford where the water temperature in the harbor is the thirties and when you walk down by the waterfront the damp cold gets into your bones.

We took a long walk this afternoon, and in one place an orange tree hung over the sidewalk, with dozens of ripe oranges in the glossy green leaves. Carol reached up and picked one, and peeled it open, and the smell of orange faintly perfumed the air around us as we walked. “Mm,” she said, “it’s so sweet.”

And in the middle of all this, I’m reading Anthony Trollope’s novel Can You Forgive Her? with its long gentle conversations that slowly reveal the personalities of the characters — the pride of Alice, the passionate nature of Lady Glencora, the dissipation of George. Trollope’s finely honed moral distinctions cause me to pause periodically, put the book down, and think through the little moral decisions that the characters make. Its slow pace makes it a perfect book for reading on vacation.