10 October 2005

The cilantro is sending up happy little shoots: maybe it's time to grow now, huh? Not so hot, lots more rain. Poor stupid little cilantro. The cherry tomato plant is flowering. Flowering. I brought in all the tomatoes to ripen, so we can start to get the yard ready for winter. I've got the rosemary in, and I need to hack the oregano and basil to bits and probably make a load of pesto with it. And dry the lavender, maybe, for fresh sachets. We'll see. I don't feel bad about wasting lavender the way I would about stuff I actually eat more.

I really like the colors unripe cherry tomatoes turn. I wouldn't want to wear them or paint a room in them or anything like that, but I keep glancing out on the sun porch to admire them.

The small dog-beast has started trying to hold things down a lot more. Right now she's holding my toes down with her head. This way I can't go anywhere. Because around ten pounds of dog totally immobilizes many times that much monkey. Easily. No problem. We don't have an upper bound on how much monkey she can immobilize with her ten pound self yet. We haven't made a real project of it yet. Still, she's been putting her paws on things if she doesn't want them to go anywhere, and this can be incredibly cute.

Also she kills spiders for me and corners box elder bugs for me to kill. She tried killing a box elder bug herself once, but they apparently taste unspeakably vile, from the expression on her face. (I'm not surprised; they smell bad enough, squished.) She is mighty. She is fierce.

She's going to have a really good surprise tonight when some of her favorite auxiliary monkeys come over for C.J.'s birthday.

Um. And the said good surprise lasted long enough that I went to bed after people went home and didn't get this posted. Sorry. But Miss Ista really was a happy pup with all the people to see and play with and lick and get petted by. And I was a pretty happy pup myself, and so was the Birthday Ceej, from the looks of it, so that really could have been worse.

I am trying not to work on everything at once, and since I barely have the energy to work on anything at once, this is probably easier than it would usually be. Very soon, if not immediately, I should have pictures up for Wednesday (and Wednesday) and Thursday (and Thursday) of our trip to London. Also there will be my new baked apple recipe, which is pretty healthy, as tasty desserts go, until you put a couple of big scoops of ice cream on it, in which eventuality it's merely tasty. And hey, ice cream has calcium, right? Probably you need calcium. Lots of people don't get enough. I'm only thinking of your well-being.