Saturday, May 16, 2009

Of Cactus and London and this 'n that...







Haven't written here in ages, but people are still visiting (and even linking to me--thanks!) so I guess I'd better start writing again!



With the spring life has gotten very busy. We've been having work done to finish up the outside...brick and stone work on the front of the house, a cement driveway (and it's a long one), finishing up/off the upstairs... and because we use people who have other jobs, that work gets done almost exclusively on Saturdays only...so it's been a long drawn out process and is still not finished.



Gardening fever has also struck and I've got supina (hanging) petunias in my long front flower box (aout ten plants) and tons of perenial daisies along the wall of our upper driveway (OK, 30 plants total!) and we planted 44, yes 44 cyprus trees! They're babies, only about 18 inches tall, but one day, watch out Tuscany! We have two vegetable gardings going too, full of lettuce, eggplants, tomatoes, peas, beans, potatoes and herbs. I want to put in some brussel sprouts and black-leaf dinosaur kale too, but I think we'll wait until July so they can grow in the cooler fall months. Oh, and my cactus had three blooms at the same time! It's only about a foot tall, but it sits above a retaining wall that I have at the upper entrance to my driveway. Another cactus nearby promises to be a blooming spectacle soon (note all the buds!).



I'm still working three full days a week, and my students are busy preparing for a Cambridge Business English exam in early June. It's not easy and they are working hard (though many of them would prefer to forget the exam and just have conversation!). I'm working hard to keep all the photocopies organized, practice tests scored and remembering which class is which!



The menagerie here slowly grows, with our platy tank having two new members (2 sunset plattys) which brings the number in that tank to 10 fish, which includes two babies who have survived. We have another pregnant female (a mickey mouse platty) and hope at least one of her babies will survive too (they seem to be irrisistible snacks when tiny, even to their mom!).




At Easter we went to London and had a grand ole' time. Absolutely loved it. Dante was a little low-energy for the first couple of days as he initially didn't sleep well in the hotel, but once he got into the swing of things, he loved it too. My favorite thing (aside from finally meeting Big Ben in person) was Lion King in the theatre ("on Broadway" I would say if this were in NY, so what do I say when I see a show in London?). The theatre was beautiful, we laughed, ate ice cream in our seats during intermission, went to the martini bar across the street afterwards (and had typical roast beef with yorkshire pudding next door beforehand) and shopped in Coventry Gardens both before and after. Reminded me of the States in some ways, only waaaaaay closer. Yea! (See pictures on facebook.)




Got to run. I'm in an organizing, cleaning, moving furniture around mood (yes, Pio, things have changed a little in the week you've been in NY). I want to accomplish a lot today as tomorrow it will be back to working on the gardens, then Tuesday back to work. Whew! Have a good one, and thanks for reading, Diane