We can haz had cook-out?

I think that was a cook-out. I'm sure that was a cook-out. I cooked; we were out.

I went up to the city first, to feed cats and explore more, from 24th-and-Mission (dear Bart, what would I do without you?) to 22nd Street (yay Caltrain! without whom I wouldn't be here, in a very literal sense). Little by little, my feet are learning the city. My horizons push out.

And so home, to a house full of friends: acanthusleaf, balutakat, jeanvieve, as well as m'beloved klwilliams. And there was beer and wine, and I lit the grill and the slow cooker and pretty much everything else, and used some leftovers and some rightunders and made breakfast beans and lamb chilli and two kinds of smoked pork and sesame-seed rolls and avocado-and-tahini dip and and. Jeannie made a salad.

And after everybody had eaten everything, we went for a walk, a walk, a walk! And it was all good, really.

Boys meet World

As a non-parent watching my friends raise children, I've always been an advocate of free-and-easy relaxed parenting, the importance of letting them go. Of course they should walk into town by themselves, ride bikes all over with their mates, stay out after dark, etc etc.

As a Person With Cats, I am apparently neurotic, fretful and restrictive. Of course I want the boys to have the freedom of California, to roam the wilds and come home with leaves in their fur, full of anglers' tales about the birds that got away - but we let them out one by one this afternoon and I was as anxious as you can imagine, watching them all the time, looming over them when I could, distressed when they wouldn't come when I called them. As soon as Mac jumped to the top of the fence, I hooked him off - he hissed at me! - and fetched him in, rather than see him jump down into the neighbours' yard; and I brought Barry in even sooner, long before he was ready.

Still. No doubt I will settle to the notion; no doubt they will come back at suppertime, when we do eventually let them roam at will. When I can steel myself to it. Right now I am the opposite of a mother-bird with fledglings: pushing them back into the nest, rather than helping them to fly.

How does my garden grow?

The boys got a tour of their new territory; it's only fair that I should afford you a glimpse.

Peas and poppies!





And the lemon tree of my heart's desire:



And the Rosemary that Took Over the World:



And the broad-leafed sage, with chillies before and tomatoes behind:



And my teeny tiny bay tree twig:



(There is also the great big orange and the rose bushes and the boysenberry canes and the strawberries and the rest of the vegetable patch and the great dry lawn and the grill and the clubhouse Debauched Sloth with all that that implies, but this is enough to be going on with for now. As I just had cause to say to the cats.)