with silver bells and cockleshells and pretty maids all in a row

I awoke today and drove to the evil city, where I had brunch with Heather and Salim. Despite the fact that the city is completely dangerous and degenerate, I had a fun time - we ate at this place near their apartment that they had taken me to once before. We talked about nothing in particular, as I usually do with them, and generally had a great time. It was good to see Salim again - I see Heather at work almost every day, but I don't see Salim nearly as often, and seeing the two of them together (usually bickering about something) makes me very happy. We wandered around the neighborhood for a bit, and then I showed them my new car (which I still love!) before taking my leave.

When I got back to the safety and security of the peninsula, I went to a flower nursery and bought ~$100 worth of various flowering annuals. I got impatiens, begonias, snapdragons, lobelia, and salvia in several different colors (yellow, orange, purple, hot pink, white - basically, whatever struck my fancy). Thus committed to doing something about my patio, I came home and spent an hour raking up all of the dead leaves and old mulch from last year, filling six 39-gallon garbage bags w/detritus that I will now have to haul to Palo Alto's recycling/landfill site. I also successfully planted the snapdragons and some of the salvia around the big rock that is in the center of my garden. I had assumed that it was some dumb ornamental thing, but I was forced to revise my opinion (and dig more shallowly) when I unearthed the jawbone of what was probably someone's pet cat or dog. Ugh. Now that I know that the rock is probably a tombstone, I'm not quite so thrilled, but hopefully the decayed remains of whatever animal was buried there will serve as fertilizer rather than poison.

I should have kept planting, but I was tired and hungry by this point (the search for plants had occupied the better part of the afternoon since I went into the office to research partial-shade-tolerant plants, before spending an hour wandering around the nursery and then going to another store to buy supplemental gardening soil). So, I ran out to get a burrito, and when I got home I just really wanted to go to bed. Instead, I managed to take a quick shower, but now I think it's time to throw in the towel. I want to get up early tomorrow so that I can do so more planting before brunch with Terry, but we'll see whether my ambition overrides my body's natural tendency to hit the snooze button for an hour. Goodnight!