Bookshelf:

Garden of Surprises

I ended up spending most of my free time this week reading, and finished Sean McMullen's first (US) novel, The Centurion's Empire, on Thursday. This didn't leave me with a lot of time to write journal entries, although I didn't have a whole lot to write about anyway, other than what I was reading.

I did go up to visit Debbi at her place on Tuesday, though, and she cooked dinner. We keep meaning to catch up on watching 24 and The West Wing, which we're several months behind on, but never seem to make time to do so. Well, as long as I don't run out of videotape, it's not a big deal.

Yesterday afternoon we went out to run errands. I needed more cat food, and I wanted to run by Cost Plus to look at their outdoor furniture. I've been trying to decide between a 46" round wooden table at Target, and a 30" round wooden table at Cost Plus. Haven't decided yet. My inclination right now is to go with the smaller table, since it can be used both upstairs and downstairs, and I can always buy a larger table if I want it. Of course, I also need chairs...

All I ended up buying were some glass floating candle holders for my pond and some small citronella candles, though.

Then it was off to Home Despot, to spend the gift certificate Debbi had given me when I moved in. A laundry list of what I bought:

1. A trellis for the grape vines growing against my chimney. Currently they're just hanging off of nails, and I thought a trellis would be more functional and look nicer.
2. Small bamboo poles and velcro straps to prop up the snapdragons along my driveway. Several of them were leaning out into the driveway to get more midday sun, and I wanted to strap them back to make sure I didn't accidentally run over them.
3. A curtain rod to run over my downstairs sliding glass doors. (Have to install it, then buy curtains for it. Then do the upstairs doors in my bedroom.)
4. A small paintbrush to touch up spots on my interior walls.
5. A new mat for the door to my patio, as the one I inherited from the previous owner is both ugly and not very functional.

I'd saved up a good list of stuff to buy, and it felt good to get a bunch of it off my list.

In the evening Debbi and I joined Lisa, Michel, and Lisa's parents for Lisa's birthday dinner. Lisa is also moving this weekend, as one of her roommates decided to get her own place. She's just moving a couple of buildings down, but it's still a production.

We went to an Italian restaurant in Milpitas called Macaroni Grill, which is actually more upscale than its name suggests, though this didn't stop many people from attending in jeans (including myself), which was fine. The food was actually very tasty - I got veal in a buttery cream sauce - and the tiramisu was regarded by us all as being excellent.

Lisa's an only child, and I think her parents doted on her. They're nice folks; her Dad just retired and is apparently fixing many things around their house! For some reason (not that I objected), we all went over to Best Buy after dinner to look around. Her Dad and I ended up talking about cordless phones (I'm looking for a new one - a 900 MHz digital one, since 2.4 GHz apparently interferes with other wireless technologies), and later about DVDs. I also looked for CDs by some prog rock bands I'm interested in (Spock's Beard, Flower Kings, I.Q., Jadis and Iluvitar), but only found albums by the first two, and both priced higher than I want to pay (and you can always find them cheaper if you shop around).

After that, almost everyone else headed off to a club where Debbi, Lisa and Michel do country dancing, which I think is how they all met in the first place. My faithful readers might know that I don't dance and am not into country music (indeed, most of the music I am into is not dancable), so I passed on that and went to Borrone for the evening to read.

Debbi snuck in a little after 1 am and crawled into bed. I was sort of half-awake, which is about all I ever am between when I fall asleep and when I actually wake up the next morning.

Debbi was feeling a little unwell today - an upset stomach possibly from dinner. We got up quite late this morning, and went to have bagels for lunch, as I figured that bread and cream cheese was a good thing to eat if your tummy's upset. Then we drove to the Stevens Creek Trail to walk along it. I'd biked it once before, but I wanted to check out the progress at extending it south, and to get a pedestrian's-eye view of it. My feeling is that it's not quite as scenic as the Los Gatos Creek Trail down where I used to live, but it's still quite lovely. I need to get out and bike it more often.

The rest of the afternoon I spent working with the stuff I'd picked up yesterday. I tied the snapdragons in the front yard, and also cut away the boxwood around my faucet in front so I could attach a hose to it. Then I watered the snapdragons as I think they have been a little parched where they are.

I decided to move the dwarf orange tree to another spot on my patio where it will get more sun. This is only temporary, as I do want to move it upstairs, but I figured it would give me a feel for how tough that would be. The verdict is: It's heavy! And it's in an octagonal barrel which will be tricky to move upstairs. I think we're going to need either multiple strong people, or else some strong ropes or something to hold the container in place as we drag it upstairs. Maybe both. (Strangely, the container has wheels, although since it's been sitting in dirt for ghod knows how long, they don't work very well.) Anyway, at least it should be happier for the next couple of weeks in more direct sun.

Let's see: I dug up some weeds around the yard, and also was quite pleased and surprised to find some new plants which are starting to flower: Two are tall stalks with deep red flowers at their ends, and others are scrubbier plants with smaller blue flowers on them. Very pretty! In addition to the long-stemmed purple flowers that appeared a few weeks ago, my yard is an impressive array of colors and is very pretty. The planter behind the bench is rather haphazardly arranged, but is still nice. I might rearrange some of the plants in it at some point, though. Having tall stalks of garlic right in front of the bright flowers is rather strange.

The goldfish in the pond is still kicking (or, er, whatever it is goldfish do). I should buy him some friends sometime soon. Genevieve recommends getting rid of the hyacinths since she says they're rather pernicious flowers which have been wreaking havoc in the California ecologies. I might do that, since they're not really doing anything interesting in the pond anyway. Or maybe I'll just get rid of half of them.

I haven't put up the trellis, or the curtain rod. Still, this is good work for a bright and sunny weekend.