the weeds don't have a chance

Sometimes a machine helps. Six rows of corn, one row of beans, and eight tomato plants are in the ground. And occasionally a little gadget (a Sharper Image corkscrew, $4.50, in the original box), although hardly necessary, is just too big a bargain to pass up. We'll be traveling to Little Valley on Friday. That will give Tom some time to work on the weeds at 413. I'm looking forward to some fries, a hotdog, maybe even a yard sale.

remember that afghan?

The heavy one that was made, I think, by Dad's mother. If I'm 62, and I never met her, that makes the afghan old. And it had issues. Here's the before shot of one square.

And the after.

This is not Smithsonian textile restoration, but from a distance, I dare you to pick out the problems. It will be reinstalled at the homestead in a few weeks. I even washed it. Those of you who didn't appreciate it when you were young, better change your attitude. It was 82 degrees here today, and this is WOOL.

On the garden front, sometimes we win, sometimes we lose.

This is one of about 10 yellow tulips that are now in the garden. If you check the picture, you can probably make out the stems that have been bitten off, by some four-legged creature. In one night, Bambi ate about 40 yellow tulip blossoms.

And just to show you that we do take a field trip every once in a while. We had to drive into Bethesda to find a replacement grid for Tom's grill and right next to Strosnider's (the best hardware store ever, just ignore the prices) is Bruce Variety.

It's known all over the area for never removing anything that it puts on its shelves. It's as dark and cluttered as it was when Bridget worked there while she was in high school. Nice to see some thing don't change.

Zoey's gone

Bridget arrived yesterday afternoon, in time for a trip to Target and one of Tom's roast beef, Yorkshire pudding dinners. Zoey celebrated by actually coming downstairs and doing a little exploring. This morning, with the help of one pink pill and a spoonful of tunafish, Zoey was packed up and on her way. (Notice Bridget is wearing a hat. It's cold here. It's not sunny California.) The report from Bridget is that the little pink pill worked, for about half an hour. The rest of the trip, not so much... In the basement, Tom's little green things keep growing. Those are 18-inch dowels that they are twining around now, and taller may be needed. The miles are well marked on the C&O canal path. I wish I could say we started in Georgetown at the first mile but we started just before mile 23. Out and back, probably close to 7 miles, and no more than a dozen other walkers. Of the few walkers we saw, a disproportionate number were carrying heavy binoculars or cameras with long, pretentious lenses.

My pocketsize little digital caught all the exciting action.