Forwards, Backwards, Sideways

My garden is in an "in-between" phase. Sweet-peas are waning. My flashy, lipstick-colored Gladioli have had some early glory, and been burned by a quick heat wave. Their apricot and cream clothed cousins are just unfurling their ruffles. Dahlias are beginning to loosen their tight buds, but not enough yet for anyone but me to know their colors, which are cataloged in my plant memory-banks.
There are nasturtiums and geraniums and Persian, night-blooming jasmine but I didn't think I had enough cutting specimens to make a bouquet to take to a friend who had invited us to lunch on Sunday.

But wait! Behind the jasmine, out of sight, I  have a small and isolated herd of bi-color sweet-peas, pretending to be butterflies as they bob around in the breeze. That's a start.

Fuchsia, begonia and petunia are not for cutting but make a glowing oasis of color in the shade.

I scavenged around and came up with enough blooms to fill a vase, after all. From this angle it looks quite formal, with skyscraper gladioli for verticality and rotund hydrangea for foundation volume. When delivering flowers to an Artist, best have a design theory to present along with:)

Rosemary, snap-dragons, sweet-peas and jasmine fill in the gaps between the building blocks.

The back of the bouquet has a separate identity entirely, a wild-child cluster of chaos which is my favorite aspect.
I don't often cut flowers for myself. I enjoy my garden immensely and don't feel the need to bring it indoors. I do love having flowers to cut and take to friends. This bouquet traveled a hundred miles to its destination, seat-belted upright into the back seat in the vase.

Vision Quest Elephants

Meet Butch, on his way to join us for breakfast.

Butch did bring us our breakfast, as promised, but it was more about feeding him his really.

Fond good-byes to our ten foot tall new best friend.

Last night we slept in tent-cabins in the middle of an elephant sanctuary in Northern California. The elephants have been purchased from circuses and such to allow them a humane and well cared for retirement. Our cabin overlooked their park, which they share with some water buffalo and a zebra who thinks she's an elephant.

Yesterday we took a tour of the rest of the venture, called Wild Things, where some other exotic animals are raised and work one on one with their handlers from the beginning so that they can enjoy country walks on leash every day, around the compound, and also participate in educational events and some movie shoots etc. which finance the elephant sanctuary.

During the dark night, far enough away from the city's light pollution that there were more stars than sky, the canvas walls flapped gently as the breeze came and went from the nearby ocean.  We awoke several times to a lion's roar and once to the unusual house-alarm imitation by Ed, the Hyena. Hyenas are a lot bigger than they look on TV. The hair on their backs grows from back to front, to help improve aerodynamics as they steal from hungry lions and run away backwards, dragging their loot. Hyenas have a crush strength in their jaw second only to the Nile crocodile. They don't just bite your arm, they bite it off. Ed doesn't get to go for walks, despite his/her cuteness. Hyenas come with dual-purpose genital equipment so it is hard to tell without a really close encounter whether they are male or female. No-one has volunteered to take a closer look at Ed, as yet.

I enjoyed every minute of our stay; learning new things about the animals was an unexpected bonus. The close encounter with Butch the Elephant was a deeply moving experience that I shall treasure. 

This 'n That

Nothing much accomplished today. We had Friday and Saturday night dinners out with friends, compounded by "Messing with Time" and some idiot (Husband) who made an appointment for which he had to leave home at 7:30 am this morning. The dogs don't understand that I am tired and don't feel like going for a walk, so we were out and about before anyone's Sunday newspapers hit their driveways. I have lounged around and watched some recorded shows on TV this afternoon, with a view of passers by stopping to inhale the perfume of my freesias out by the edge of the sidewalk.

Speaking of perfume; a certain big hairy beast is less smelly today. This is Boomer's pre-grooming photo, in the tub at the do-it-yourself dog wash. For this achievement alone, I deserve a rest today. "You're kidding?" he says when shown the steps up to the tub. "Forget about it!" he says when I try to brush him. "Owwwhoooo!" he says when I turn on the water. We don't even attempt to dry him with the blow dryer. It is amazing how much thrashing and snapping one dog can manage, despite being tethered to the wall. All in all he was very good (much improved, as everything is relative) and I remembered to cover my car seat with a blanket for the ride home. He is silky smooth and lavender scented, for a day or two.

A Satisfying Weekend

Sometimes a weekend will disappear, fizzling dismally and subsiding in a puff of smoke, with insufficient spark to ignite. You know there was a weekend. You saw it coming. It was written on your agenda, but procrastination, failed plans or lethargy extinguished it into an in-salvageable and unremarkable space saver stuck between Friday and Monday.

My weekend was better than that. I kept my, now regular, Friday Evening Date with Gary Cooper!

It was getting dark early and producing some messy squalls of rain. Traffic had a few more hold-ups than I had planned for so it was a bit of a race to change into my riding gear, feed and walk the dog and get up the hill to the barn without being tardy. Despite rain, dark and a mudslide or two on the canyon road, there were still a few (fool)hardy cyclists pedaling away, brightly colored plastic ponchos a-billow. I avoided collecting any new hood ornaments and took my accumulated adrenaline with me, transformed into a bubbly mood, as I climbed on for my precious dose of horse.

Back down the hill, a quick shower and a make-shift dinner; something leafy and something hot with bread and wine and cheese. We made some inroads into the pirouette cookies, filled with hazelnuts, that I got at the liquor/grocery store when I scampered in to purchase dog food, on my earlier trajectory home. We dip the cookies in our wine glasses. Dip, crunch, enjoy, repeat.

Are the cookies a vehicle for the wine or au contraire? I'll need to buy some more to further test my theory.

Saturday decided to expose some blue sky. I woke up and congratulated myself on the absence of aches and pains, old or new; a very liberating feeling. I fed and walked The Canine One and made a quick jaunt to work to meet a client who surprised me by being punctual so it did not consume my whole morning.

I was able to visit the grocery store and switched my planned evening dinner menu to beef brochettes, as there were no appealing whole fish. (Possibly an oxymoron?).

I chose some fresh ginger, garlic, brown mushrooms, zucchini/courgettes, cherry tomatoes and a beautiful golden bell pepper. I marinated the beef as soon as I got home, adding salt, pepper, thyme, rosemary, Worcester sauce and a slug of Laphroaig Whisky. (Laphroaig is perfect for barbeque).

My weekend goal was to refresh the hanging of the paintings on our walls. Hubby's paintings are hung on every wall all over the house. We hang Studio-Style, which means fitting as many in as possible in a harmonious way.

I start by visiting all the artwork, especially new pieces that have recently emerged. I select a couple of key pieces and, in order to place them front and center, must first remove a dozen other pictures from the main wall of the living room. The ripples of change flow outward from there. Color, shape, size and subject matter are all considered to create a balanced impression. A new space on that wall may be perfect for a painting that was previously in our bedroom. The new void in the bedroom can't just be filled, all the bedroom paintings must change places; some stay, some go into another part of our home.

I had one of those "What the Heck! Why Not?" moments and decided that the furniture must be rearranged as well. The Canine One was sticking close all day with her "Are we moving again?" face on.

As the afternoon wore out, I was making progress but far from done. Our dinner guests had a flat tire so I went to pick them up. They had been warned what I was up to. They approved my progress so far and we turned to the serious business of serving wine and lighting the barbecue.

Replete

Lake San Antonio, California, Saturday Evening, January 16th, 2010:

At the very instant that the wind cries "Uncle" and lays spent, surrendering its feeble efforts to keep sky and earth apart, an owl takes up the song of night, punctuated by the discordant cry of a woodpecker winging home moments before curfew. The hollow echo of a fish splashing one last time from the lake water below our cabin is a reminder to believe in things we cannot always perceive.

Deer graze on the fresh waterside shoots of grass, their graceful movements robbed of fine detail and reincarnated as living silhouettes.

Tonight we will sleep beneath the realm of eagles and dream of knowing golden eyes and the marvel of flight.

Toasting Hemingway

Yesterday was Lovely-Daughter's 24th birthday. We met for dinner at La Bodegita, Cuban Restaurant. LD has had her hair highlights up-dated into very Glam, Long Summer-Streaks. Her make-up was focused on a "smokey eye". She was dressed to party with her friends after we "Oldies" went home and she and her handsome, well dressed, husband looked as though they were ready for the red carpet. ( She sure didn't get all this fashion sense from me. Blame/applause to the French side of the family). They were punctual; that she gets from me.

La Bodegita is very nice, it has warm surroundings, great service and food as well as a Rum Selection that would satisfy Hemingway.
I was advised to try a mixed drink with a subtle splash of rum. It tasted like wishy washy lemonade and had sugar coating the outside of the glass. Have they met me before? I don't want a sticky glass and please keep sprigs of mint to yourself; it is an aromatic weed and only vaguely useful in a sauce served with roast lamb.

The attentive waiter, hearing my disappointment, advised another cocktail, this one containing something called "Rum Agricole". Much more my style! I needed my teeth whitened anyway and now won't need the dentist to do them! I imagine that Rum Agricole is used to chase the rats out of the sugar cane plantations. Just what I was looking for.

We had Ceviche followed by Paella, which is always such a risk to order, not last night. The Paella deserved to be photographed, it was beautiful, but we were too lazy to get the camera from the car. The ingredients were fresh and tasty and the rice was moist and seasoned to perfection. Yum! Dessert involved flambeed bananas, of course, and we finished up keeping the men company in the cigar salon and sipping, a more sophisticated, mellow, aged rum which was like nectar of the Gods.

Today Hubby and I drove South to San Juan Bautista, one of the original California Missions, originally built in the seventeen-hundreds. The ground drops off suddenly beside the Mission. that is the San Andreas Fault Line, right there! It makes sense to pray hard in a spot where the plates of the Earth's crust collide. The Mission is still a functioning Church and the town around it is simple Western-Style with one main street. There are flowers, intermingled with enormous old cacti, everywhere. Today the roses were spectacular and the swallows were flitting around, as always in the spring. We were lucky enough to catch sight of a variety of flowering cacti.

Our favorite lunch spot is Jardine de San Juan, a Mexican restaurant with a huge interior courtyard, shaded by plane trees and accented with purple clematis, pink geraniums and a wandering troop of chickens, with accompanying roosters. There is a central fountain and live musicians.

It is hard to admit that we sometimes don't appreciate this little day trip destination, (easily bored), but today it was perfect.