Jean and Carissa lived as modestly and as happily as a young couple could, until they were a middle-aged couple. they had some friends in the nearby town of Santo Agostino, but since neither had need for money, Jean had received a tidy inheritance, they decided against working, and so spent an incredible amount of time alone together, which was wonderful for both. they both rose with the sun every day, and on days that the earth was shielded by clouds, they would sleep in. no point in getting up if it's cloudy, Jean said. Might as well stay in bed with you where it's bright. this would always make Carissa smile and her face would shine like the sun to fulfill Jean's compliment. Carissa would always be twice as warm and contented on gray days, as she knew that the garden would be tempered by clouds. She'd get up and make breakfast for the two of them, while Jean would amble around the garden and survey what his day would lead him into. They had breakfast, usually coffee and toast, always accompanied by blackberry preserves.
After they had their breakfast, they'd walk through the garden together, and talk about the day, what their plans were and when they would reconvene for lunch. Lunch was always at two, but they always argued about it. Carissa always told Jean to be back from wherever he was by one o'clock for lunch, but she always planned on having lunch at two. Though Jean was madly in love, this was the one way that he asserted independence and declared that he was still the one calling the shots. His wife knew him better than he knew himself, and was quite amused by the charade anyway.
Jean would do one of four things during the first half of the day:
One: Walk the perimeter of his garden, and then along the beach until he could no longer see the Sentinel (the black oak behind the house)
Two: Swim laps in the ocean, but never so far out into the ocean so that he could not see the Sentinel
Three: Meditate along the banks of the pond, the inner sanctum of the garden
Four: Wander into Santo Agostino and buy groceries and run other errands with Carissa
Carissa kept her mornings to herself, the exception of which was going into town with Jean.
Their afternoons, however, were always spent together. They would work in the garden on different projects, and there was always something to do. Whenever one project would end, an annual chore of raking up leaves or harvesting the rest of the fruit off of one of the trees would inevitably come up. Jean became an amateur beekeeper by default, as the bees selected a corner of the blackberry patch as their headquarters. After discovering the hive, Jean researched beekeeping and build himself a small apiary, and eventually transferred the hive. It was projects like this that continually sprung up and while they were immensely rewarding, they were also amazingly time consuming, and required continual attention to sustain.
After twenty years of living in the house within the garden, Jean and Carissa had been sufficiently groomed as the caretakers of the garden.
