Just coming into the kitchen for the first time.   Brought some lovely strawberries and maple goat cheese from the farmer's market and my brother's goat dairy.

I have done a lot of my sorting Jerry, and it's a wonderful thing. I still have a little issue with piles of paper, and occaisonally clothing, but not much else. I do have some of a friend's tired furniture. Time to take it down to the curb and see if someone wants to turn these nice, but somewhat disfunctional pieces of wood into useful items.

I have a couple of musical instruments out there which are technically mine, but on long term loan to other people. The electric base (what was I thinking?) and it's amp are with a friend who is with a number of working bands in the area and plays everything with strings except fiddle. The viola is with a young man who started in youth orchestras and is playing a neat combination of classical, and some latin jazz with his dad. There's a guitar that went to my friend Mike who was beginning to do instrument repair at the time. He fixed it up and sold it to someone who will actually play it. I still have a second fiddle, I think I'd need to play it some before passing it along, as it's old and stiff (as we get when we get older) and needs to be limbered up abit. then it would make a nice folk fiddle for someone wanting to start out, say one of my friend Katie's old timey students. The bridge is better for double stops, kinda shallow.

I love this Kitchen table. I too have had many musicians around mine, maiinly contra dance band players and callers. It's important for travelling musicians to get a good meal, relax somewhere where there's a cat to pat, conversation, maybe wine, and good coffee in the morning. There have been some interesting conversations about life on the road, choices that involve the joys of making music, and not much security for coming old age, politics and how to structure a good contra dance evening. All good stuff.

Enjoy those berries.