Blooming

 

In a quest to find a playground to meet a friend at we discovered that we live right near a reservoir with free fishing on Sundays and 3 (or was it 4?) playgrounds. And here it it was, right down the street from one of the shopping centers we often frequent. Who knew? We hiked around the lake and had a view of beautiful yellow and purple fields - unfortunately most of the yellow is an invasive chrysanthemum and not the native CA sunflower. (My friend filled me in.) The purples are purple sage and a lot of sea lavender (which I think is also invasive).



On a related note, I just read that gazanias are also invasive (although possibly less terrible?), and I planted those in our yard - they are just so beautiful! [And I planted a sea lavender at our old house and a broom, also invasive. Oops.] And here you can see our new gazebo we got on sale at a certain red and white store and put up for shade. I really would like a pergola so we could take full advantage of the whole deck rather than a section of it, but since I also want the laundry room renovated (see the washer and dryer through the hall there? I don't like that they are so prominent), that will have to wait a year or two or five.

In other news, I checked in with my surgeon today, and I am good to go. Apparently my appendix was a bit yucky (the technical term; the pathologist report came back as 'acute appendicitis'), so it was more involved to take out and thus I still have some bruising, but everything is healing and I can get back to normal. Yeah!