I pulled lunch out of the oven on Sunday and went looking for Jen around the house. Realizing she had gone outside, I found her in the garden, trimming back some of the dead brush around last year’s perennials. She’s been surrounding herself with gardening books since she got a new library card, and my family sent her home from Christmas with the entire horticulture section of Barnes & Noble. Lately I can feel her gardening neurons firing like firecrackers, and I think she’s been waiting to get outside in the dirt since the end of January. Our beds look a lot less barren than they did in February, because we now have crocuses sprouting like crabgrass, backed up by daffodils and some early scattered tulips. We have grand plans for our yard this year, but as always, the money situation means we have to be clever about our planting and landscaping. Jen somehow made $34.72 successfully spread out over the entire yard last year in time for the wedding, and I think she’s got similar excellent plans for this year. Hopefully that also involves my renting a jackhammer for a warm afternoon and pulling the concrete sidewalk along the west side of the house. (Thanks, Shelly, for the beautiful lavender, by the way.)

Meanwhile, a quick scouting trip down the back side of Beechwood Ave. revealed a major sewer installation along the property lines of our neighbors’ houses to the end of Rolling Road. Our house sits on the high side of what used to be a creekbed, and the southeast corner of our property line is the beginning of the low spot which continues down the hill. It looks like the County is going to dig up and put in a 4″ drainage system starting two houses down by the looks of the concrete junction boxes and corrugated piping stacked back there. We can only hope this will help dry out our corner of the property and remove the mosquito problem we suffer through in the summertime. Curious, though, is why they’re not starting in our backyard and our neighbors’, because he technically has a bog for a back lawn, and the area out behind our greenhouse gets pretty mucky after a good rain…

Our weekend was a very laid-back couple of days, involving some recovery time on Saturday, a scouting trip to Restoration Hardware, where we found a strong candidate for hallway lighting, viewings of Napoleon Dynamite (recommended) and Saw (skip it), and relaxation. Sunday I attempted to get some painting done after a grocery run, but quickly lost concentration and returned to my laptop to get the weblog running.

Overall, I’m very happy and impressed with MT so far. The novelty of using the web interface instead of booting into BBedit every time I want to post to the site hasn’t worn off yet, and it’s BEAUTIFUL to be able to edit one include file and have it propagate through the entire site. I’m happy.

And Linda, we are terribly sorry we missed your birthday.