The patio renovation is nearly finished, just a few cobblestones and such to get in. In the last few days I have hauled countless bags of mulch, hefted rocks the size of your average toddler, it’s all starting to pay off. As soon as I upload these photos I am mixing myself a giant cocktail and spending the rest of the afternoon in the hammock listening to the birds chirp and the bees buzz.

Hope your Sunday afternoon is just as enjoyable.

I agreed a few months back to do another art show. Yeah, I know, I told everyone they were to shoot me if I did, but this was small, and involved really good wine and great food, and people I like hanging out with. I was arranging my pieces and telling my friend about some of the comments I have received about my work. For instance, after asking where a photo was taken, wanting to know if I have really been there. Which I understand. It’s not like there aren’t thousands of people out there making money off photos they didn’t actually take. Ask Athena, she’s listened to enough coffee infused ranting on that subject.

But my favorite is this little gem. “Can I ask you a question about your art?”

“Of course you can. What is it?”

“Where do you get your frames? Your pictures are nice, but it’s the fames that make them. I mean, these frames are beautiful. “

We had endless fun coming up with variations for other creative professions. Like telling the caterer that their food is okay, but it’s the plates that really make it special. Or the table cloth. How about telling a writer that you loved their book, and your favorite thing was that amazing paper it was printed on. Without that paper it wouldn’t have been nearly as good.

I am just waiting for someone to buy one of my framed pieces and then email me to say that I should really switch to those backs with the little clips, because that would make it a whole lot easier to replace the photo.

Not the real Jeff, the four inch high plastic Jeff, which was quite traumatic for a certain nine year old. As far as could be figured, Jeff’s pea-sized plastic head could be anywhere between the back door and the trampoline at the top of the hill, 3/4’s of an acre away. The smart money was on the deck at the top of the hill, because that’s the last place anyone remembered him actually having a head. Four inch high Jeff Hardy action figures are rare. If you don’t believe me, have google.

That’s how I wound up lying on my stomach, pawing around under the deck with a stick like a chimp at a termite mound, and finding one tiny action figure head. It’s also how I wound up serving as a buffet for some creature that attacked me in my sitting region.

Here’s the view from my studio window yesterday. Ahhh! Will he stop in time?

Remember the former flower garden? Now it looks like this. The Million Dollar Spotted Dog approves.

The trampoline is nestled in it’s new home. (So much easier to administer first aid and/or discipline from here.)

All the weather sensitive work was finished before the rain started up again. Flowers are blooming. Look Jane! A perfect droplet! I’m getting better at this!

I’ve been reading Daphne, by Justine Picardie, which is about Daphne du Maurier. This made me go dig out a copy of Rebecca. Perfect reading for gloomy weather. Both books are the type that get in your head and stay there for days and days. I love the idea of houses that have enough history to surely be haunted, even if it’s just that we bring our own ghosts with us.

Athena recently posted a list of six unimportant things that make her happy. I have to agree with her on three items.

1. Good coffee. I come from a long line of coffee drinkers. My grandmother would push away a cup of insubstantial coffee and say, “If I’d wanted water I’d have asked for water. That’s so weak it couldn’t defend itself.”

2. Thunderstorms. I love drifting off to sleep listening to howling wind and rain. I don’t get to drift off to sleep any more, as my big dog is a tremendous wienie about storms. One tiny bit of thunder and she comes unglued. Now instead of drifting off to sleep, I get to hang half off the bed, wearing a dog shaped shawl.

3. Bookstores. I will turn down almost any entertainment in favor of spending time in a bookstore.

4. BBC and Netflix. Untold hours of obscure British television and foreign movies without having to endure PBS fund raising? It’s like Santa got my letter and it’s Christmas in my mailbox in 1.5 business days.

5. Bargains. Ask Swapna, or the husband. I am a cheap date. Nothing geeks me like finding a great deal. I was talking with my neighbor last week and she was saying that she really wanted furniture for the new patio they just added, “So that’s another three thousand dollars.” I said, “Honey, where are you shopping? Three thousand dollars for furniture that birds will poop on? Give me your credit card. I could turn your patio into an amusement park for three thousand dollars.”

6. Interesting boxes. I’m a sucker for good packaging. I’ll buy something that I don’t need because I like the box, then give away what ever is inside it and then fill the box with art supplies or old photos, or God knows what.

So if Eddie Izzard took me for good coffee and we stopped to browse in a bookstore on a rainy evening and I found of some old BBC miniseries in an awesome box, marked down to half price, I could die a happy woman. Seriously, I would probably seize up and die on the spot and it would be fine, because life could really never get better than that.

An old road we wandered down last summer in Scotland. I wish I could walk here every day. I’m pretty sure there’s a ghost in here somewhere. I’m going to keep looking until I find it. Woods like these have tales to tell.

What do you say we meet up there this summer and see if we can’t find one?

Totally worth giving birth to get this stuff.

First there was Spotted Cuteness, now we give you another variety. We got a trampoline last week. So far it is quite possibly the best money we ever spent on the kid. (Besides the Fisher Price My First Cocktail Shaker…) He has spent at least a couple hours a day like this.

For the worry warts, fear not, we have installed the safety enclosure. They gave us the wrong one and we had it half assembled before that became evident and we had to go get another one. In the meantime, have you ever tried to keep a nine-year-old boy off his brand new trampoline? Physically impossible, I tell ya. For now it is at the very top of the hill, the only level spot on our property. That will change, as part of our garden/patio update is leveling a spot closer to the house. And how is the patio project going, you ask?

On Monday the existing patio was jack hammered into basketball sized chunks. Now insert the sound of crickets chirping and join us as we sit evening after evening watching dusk fall over the Himalayan relief map that was once our perfectly usable patio. There has been the threat of rain since then that has kept the guys from so much as driving past and waving. And now we have actual rain, which will probably keep them from showing up all next week. I predict a completion date somewhere around August 1st. The ever optimistic man I married thinks it will be two weeks, tops. We’ll see who wins this bet. If only Barry was in charge, the whole thing would have been completed and landscaped in 24 hours.

Here is the cuteness from the title. I am torn between finding him the most adorable creature ever, and wishing he’d wind up as owl food and stop throwing all the dirt out of my planters. He’s cute, but he’s not bright enough to know that if he plants birdseed it will sprout, and not be there to eat later when comes back to dig it up. Also, I wish the Lawn-tards, who are almost as unreliable as the patio-tards could see their way clear to either drop by on a regular basis, or resign altogether.