A Mayberry RFD evening

We do live in the perfect place, in so many ways, though most of the time I get caught up in other issues and don't think that. It's getting so crowded here, and it's hard to go anywhere without getting caught in a traffic jam, and the pro-growth people want to make it even worse, and it's so expensive that normal people can't move here anymore, and and and...

But sometimes all that goes away and I think, wow, we live in such a neat place.

This afternoon it was in the 90's, so Rocket Boy took the boys swimming, while I stayed home and mucked about and then went grocery shopping. When I got back from the store, they were home, the boys crashed out in front of the TV (which for once they'd earned -- tired from swimming). Then Z from next door came over, and then all three of them went next door to Z's house to play. So I got on the computer and applied for a job (I won't get it, I won't get an interview, it's all pointless, but I have to try). It was Rocket Boy's night to make dinner, so he boiled some shrimp and fixed pasta and corn on the cob, and then the boys came home and we had dinner.

After dinner they raced back to Z's, but instead of vegging out behind the computer, as we so often do in the evenings, RB and I went out in the front yard to work on our little (very little) gardening projects. These consist of (1) the rock/fairy gardens, (2) the container under the birch tree, (3) an area next to/under the honey locust that used to be full of weeds that Rocket Boy cleared out and started planting, and (4) an area next to the house that used to have junipers and now RB is trying to grow things there, such as a tiny rosebush, and a hydrangea that he planted last fall and we were sure had died, but it came back, and onions (shown in the photo). (It's a work in progress.)

While the twins and I were in California, RB worked on all this, but he did some things I didn't approve of. For example, he got some marigolds (his favorite flower) and planted them in the container under the birch tree, with a new hydrangea in the middle of them. And he planted a tomato plant that's been sitting in our kitchen window for more than a year in the old fairy garden pot. But he put it in the backyard, where there is no sun, and he forgot to water it. So yesterday I took the hydrangea out of the container and made RB plant it in another part of the yard, and got some lobelia plants (my favorites) to add to the marigolds, making a brilliant blue and gold display. And today we transplanted the tomato plant out of the fairy garden and into the middle of this container. I think we're too late -- I think it's dead. But we'll see. The photo shows Pie Bear happily eating some grass nearby.

This photo is a close-up of the rock garden and the former fairy garden (the pot to the right). All the little toys that were in the fairy garden are now in the rock garden, along with two new plants that we got yesterday. In the fairy garden pot, tonight I planted two little paper shapes with seeds embedded in them -- that the twins were given on Saturday when we signed up for the summer reading program at the library. We'll see if anything sprouts.

When I showed this to the twins later, Kid A said, "When can we go to that Fairy Garden store again and get more stuff? I want another Venus flytrap." He means Sturtz & Copeland, a gardening store in Boulder that has a lot of fairy garden stuff -- and also, incidentally, Venus flytraps. Two years ago we really enjoyed having a Venus flytrap in the rock garden, but then Kid A took it to Z's house and left it there and it died. Maybe we should get another. Kid A swears he'll leave it at our house this time.

And here is Rocket Boy working on the other little garden area, getting ready to plant wildflower seeds in the open dirt space. That's the new hydrangea to the right, which RB had put in the container with the marigolds and I removed. ("This pot is for ANNUALS," I told RB sternly, quoting some rulebook of my own that he couldn't possibly have known about.) I think the hydrangea already looks happier over here. It's next to some chrysanthemums that we got at the grocery store last fall. I did not think they would survive the winter, but they did. Anyway, it will be interesting to see if any of the wildflowers come up. I thought it was too late to plant them, but the guy at the plant place assured us it wasn't (and he didn't sell them to us -- we already had them -- so he had no reason to lie).

As we puttered along, various neighbors walked by, some with dogs, most unknown to us. If this were really Mayberry RFD, I would know all my neighbors, but instead people are constantly walking past our house that I've never seen before. Wouldn't you think there'd be SOME repetition? I think people must change their routes a lot, because there are always new faces. I also don't think I have a great memory for faces -- I'm more likely to recognize dogs. But lots of new dogs go by, too. ANYWAY, so it's not perfect, but we're good friends with our neighbors on both sides of us, and we know some of our other neighbors. Others aren't so neighborly. Again, not really Mayberry RFD. But pretty good. And there we were, out in the yard on a warm June evening, working on our little gardens while the kids played next door (within earshot most of the time) and unknown but pleasant neighbors walked by. The only negative thing was the yellow jackets -- but nobody got stung -- and then the mosquitoes -- I have five or six bites from yesterday and today. OK, it's not perfect. But really, it was so dang nice.

At 8 pm, we knocked off. Rocket Boy went next door to tell the twins to come home and then went in to take another shower. I showed the gardens to the twins and then we went inside to get into pajamas and read stories. This is "Cat Week," so I got a bunch of cat picture books from the library. Our current chapter book is Pie, by Sarah Weeks, which I do not like, but there is a cat in it, so it's appropriate. (The cat is not named Pie. Only our old sweetie.)