Futility Now

Last weekend was beautiful, and that meant we really needed to kill some stuff.  It was tricky with me still on crutches, but we managed.  Our yard has been threatening to eat up our house, so we finally spent some time dividing things up into zones (that word is so terribly authoritative, don’t you think?) and proceeded to tackle things accordingly.  The most satisfying part was putting down some bark chips (actually nuggets, but I truly hate that word), which will hopefully keep some of what we killed and tore out from coming back.

So far in my gardening experience, there’s been a lot more killing than trying to get things to grow.

The second photo is the shared reverie experienced by Yoshi and me at receiving a truly wonderful gift — the other Telly Savalas record!  My collection is now complete.  Thank you, Eva and Christian!

Third photo: some watchers for my little followers, aka sculptures in progress.  I’ll have work in Ceramics Showcase again, at the beginning of May.  Busy fingers making up for gimpy ankle.

The last photo is in the center of the front yard, where we dug out a moat for more bark to go around a few cutie plants.

On Friday I turn 34.  I’m not that worked up about my age, but I really liked 33, I especially like double numbers.

Last stop in Toulouse? Coffee drinks with Nutella!

We met up with Kate and Zia in Beziers and headed to St. Chinian in a gigantic fancy midnight blue Citroen. Kate is an. . . exciting driver. Whew!

We could see why Kate felt guilty with just the two of them at the house initially.  It is four stories tall.

J and I stayed on the fourth floor, where everything was butter yellows and smooth terrazzo tiles and gigantic bathtub. Ooh la la.

I haven’t done nearly as much traveling as J, and I’m sure it’s come up somewhere already that this is my first time abroad. What I will say is that the few times I have traveled have been longer trips that have allowed me to do things like grocery shop and cook and get a general sense of what daily life is like. It was great fun, then, to go to the supermarche and pick up some cured meats and pasta and veg, and then (over a gas stove, le sigh) throw something together with the sound of cicadas and the long sharp shadows of early evening in the background.

Rather unfairly, the next morning J had to report to work; Kate and Zia and I went off into the mountains, more specifically to St. Pons and Fraisse-sur-Agout.

It was very pretty, and hot. We wandered down to the source of the Jaur, under a rocky outcropping. The air was positively chilling, it was so strange compared to the direct environs. I find nature totally bewildering, in this case it was in a nice way.

On Sunday we gave up on improving our transit situation and went to Marché aux Puces, which are these massive flea markets up in the north of Paris. To start out we had terrible coffee in the bar across the street from out hotel, which looks like this from said bar.

When you get to the markets you start by pushing through a ring of stalls that sell shoes and mobile phones, just like any street market in the world. Eventually you get to these sort of arecade-y (in the old sense, not the video game sense) buildings and everything gets Franch Franch Franch (“and Peru!”)

Then we ate delicious quiche because we’d been wandering around for hours and were well on our way to being tres fatigue.

When I took this picture of Yoshi I imagined that he was singing “Cemetery Gates.”

Despite our well-documented efforts to tame the yard, it is already a total jungle. Here is a picture of Yoshi looking out the window in disgust at the fruits of our slovenliness.

Rather than taming the damn thing, we’ve run off to Parkdale again (geez). Here is a picture of Mount Hood.

When I turned the camera on to take that last picture, the shutter speed was set really low. I thought the grass looked cool all overexposed.