Happy Spring

Pine Cone
Originally uploaded by suzipaw

(It's a beautiful weekend. I wrote most of this yesterday. I hope to be outside most of the rest of the day.)

M surprised me last night with good news--because he has next week off from teaching, he would be able to study then rather over the weekend, meaning we could spend both days together, which is a pretty rare occurrence. What to do? How not to squander the time? We did sort of lavishly let today slip away--we slept in, I did a few chores while he really slept in. We spent a lot of time discussing how we should spend our time… and then decided to have breakfast (at um, noon) at the Pine Cone, one of our favorite diners in Sebastopol, a place where we've chowed regularly since moving back to California, and a place that has obviously seen a lot of years and patrons. We were dismayed to find out that today was its last day in operation! I think another restaurant will take its place, and it really does need to have the leaky ceiling repaired, duct-taped banquettes replaced, and please no more burnt-hair-looking things in my Potato Delight. But still, one more reasonably priced sliver of unpretentious Sonoma County bites the dust, sigh. Or maybe I should be more optimistic--it's not impossible to think that a pleasant new eatery could inhabit that spot. It's spring, keep hope alive!

On the way home, M and I stopped at a nursery and farm supply store I'd wanted to visit for some time, and just never had. We've been in the market for new containers to replace the rotting and gopher-chomped wine barrels that current form the boundaries of my gardening efforts, and settled on the galvanized steel livestock watering troughs. They didn't have them at the first place (though I did pick up a couple of tomato plants, Oregon Spring and Sun Gold). The ranch and vineyard supply place down the highway did have them, however, so we pulled the trigger. I think we're going to need one more. And it's going to be several weekends worth of effort--we need to break down the barrels (I'm trying to think of something arty to do with the hoops, level a little more of the area behind the back deck that the barrels are currently occupying since the troughs are wider, and then of course, haul in and fill them with dirt. A lot of dirt. I want it to be better quality than the stuff we filled the barrels with initially.

We're also seriously talking about actively trying to adversely possess the six feet of yard between our back fence and the synagogue's fence. Apparently all we have to do is take down our fence, extend our side fences back to theirs and use the space for five years, then file a claim that it's ours. Of course, I have no idea what happens if the synagogue opposes our claim, or tells us not to trespass on the space during the five years, but what the hell, better to ask forgiveness than permission I suppose.