Bootiful

Feels such a privilege to walk to church through fields of flowers and round a castle; Mike knocked the flowers off his boots, but I liked mine. 

Good to chat to folk walking down the hill into town, albeit with masks on (mandatory on the street if you can't distance), and to have lunch at Pátio da Oliveira, now run by Helder (from the Adega Velha, which has closed until "this is totally over") and his missus. Only us and two other tables, so a bit worrying if they'll survive... 

Gratefuls:
- another perfect day weatherwise - misty morning, bright sunshine, cool evening, gorgeous sunset
- Gaynor going home from hospital
- chatting to Vizinho on the way home, standing outside his land, next to ours

The Body, ch3 - Microbial You, p33-35
Eighty per cent of the air you breathe is nitrogen... For nitrogen to be useful to us, it must be converted into more sociable forms, like ammonia, and it is bacteria that do that job for us. Without their help, we would die... You are home to trillions and trillions of tiny living things and they do you a surprising amount of good. They... extract beneficial nutriments like Vitamins B2 and B12 and folic acid... you are likely to have forty thousand species of microbe calling you home...