How's Robb?

 The soil in our East Oakland garden can be charitably described as "challenging."  In the interest of improving things, I'm constantly dragging home soil amendments. Horse manure, wood chips, you name it.  And as a result of all of the things I dig into our soil, we grow a wide variety of mushrooms. Every few years, the garden sprouts a single -- and usually bug-infested -- morel.  This year, we hit the jackpot. Robb found a cache of morels in a particularly weedy part of the garden.  He read our mushroom books. And he read our other mushroom books, and then he made a beautiful pizza with a home-made crust.  It was delicious. 

Robb and I are career vegetarians. We do not buy our cats large hunks of meat or bones.  And yet.  This is what I found on the kitchen rug this morning.  Oh kitties....

It's time once again for the somewhat-annual EggStravaganza, where I'll teach you to make somewhat traditional Eastern European Easter eggs, and we'll have some laughs, and hopefully won't set too many things on fire.  Saturday, March 26th 1-5pm 1111 8th Street, Berkeley  Dress to work with dye. Bring your own blown eggs.  And please, please, please let me know if you're coming. It really helps me plan the set-up. 

I've been enjoying some much needed time off from work. I've been working in the garden, sewing a project with Emma (more on that, anon), and doing a bit of urban kayaking with Lassen and Robb.  Robb and I wrote up a huge list of tasks I wanted to get done, and we've accomplished most of them. Today's big job was hauling bulk trash to the curb. It's remarkable how much trash is produced while restoring an older home.  We're finally getting some rain, which will hopefully diminish the multi-year drought we've been experiencing. Kayaking was scheduled on a non-rainy day (although I still got drenched).  And bulk trash was hauled with one eye on the rain clouds.  As for the meatballs?   Well, Sleeves dragged a huge one in through the cat door, caterwauling a mournful hunting song. Cats who live in groups will often vocalize when they've brought home prey.  We're not thrilled that he's dragging home meatballs, but it's a lot better than the week

I'm enjoying a bit of well-earned vacation.  Here, because it amused me, are the signs on the bathroom doors at the legendary nursery Annie's Annuals.  But wait. It gets better.