The Arbor

We've moved from spring to summer today. Tomorrow we'll be back to spring and by the weekend it will probably be winter again. For now, I'm loving summer.

I'm a slow learner, but I am slowly beginning to find my way around in intuitive ways instead of feeling like I'm setting off into uncharted territory every time I go anywhere. I raced across town to my pilates class, forgetting that the road is torn up for a massive sewer replacement project--flagpersons, one way traffic, trucks driving around in the middle of the road and barely patched trenches that make you feel like you are driving down the middle of the railroad track! I arrived, out of breath only to remember that the class doesn't start until 10 minutes after the hour. Plenty of time to torture myself on a roller...(you really don't want to know...)

Back home, David had arrived to put the finishing touches on the arbor. It was already over 70 and predicted to be over 80 later in the day. David was having a bad hair day in the heat and threatening to wear a turban. I suggested a haircut. We both laughed at the vision of David in a turban....

We are expecting our Berkeley friends who moved to a condo in Oakland at the same time as we moved to Santa Rosa. We're hoping to have appetizers on the porch, and tacos at the dining table which is four steps from the kitchen and two steps from the porch! We will have a salad of lettuce from the garden and a Tres Leches cake for dessert. If only I knew how to make a Margarita. We Berkeley old-timers ushered California into the wine culture and passed up the mixed drink world. OilMan has always been a beer drinker and is now reveling in the burgeoning artisan beer movement. He raves about an IPA called Pliny the Elder...

The arbor isn't quite ready for public viewing --three shovels and a pitchfork stuck into the ground, buckets that are supposed to hold weeds but seem to hold mostly dirt while the weeds that are supposed to be in the buckets lie around everywhere drying in the sun. Piles of white material and burlap bags ,that once covered the raised beds and the citrus trees, lie around in untidy piles and bags of soil and snail bait await spreading.
Definitely a work in progress, and also in logistics, since the property is on three separate levels, with no place to store anything on the top level yet. I've given you a discreet peek from an odd angle so that you can't see the compost pile behind the wisteria....