the art of throwing a good party...

is having someone else throw the party for you.

Okay, that’s not entirely true, but I’m exhausted from having to work long hours again this week while fighting off a cold. Luckily the cold lost the fight, but I’m pretty spent.

Tonight is the first installment of the Jane Austen movie club. There was no book assigned, and I've got Pride and Prejudice in from Netflix. Since I’ve got more wiggle room here than at Kassidy's apartment, my house will be a repeat venue but with Kassidy as host.

And, since Kassidy won’t be here for a little while, I thought I’d put up a pic from last summer. I’m in my usual post-work attire: t-shirt, fire pants, and some birks (because the first thing I did at the end of the day was take those boots off my feet).

I like this picture because it reminds me of all the time I spent in someone else’s garden last year. I’d often get up at 5am, go help Erik weed his research plots, go to work for 8-10-or-12 hours, and then come home to weed or water or train morning glory vines or trim basil in either my yard or Erik’s. I guess I’m making it sound like a lot of work (and the truth is, getting out of bed at 5am really was), but crawling around in the dirt was just as fun as it was as a kid. And the rewards were fantastic! (I was a control-freak when it came to those morning glories…)

The morning glories are headed up the rails of the deck. There are two potato plants on the side of the bed closest to the bottom of the picture. Sunflowers line the back of the bed, and at the front are fifteen or twenty basil plants. Just today I was at the store, lamenting that I made all that basil into pesto. The stuff at the store just doesn't look all that great (especially for the price), and it'd be so nice to have some through the winter... I'm definitely freezing some whole this year.