Dichroic Reflections

construction

I feel like I should have had an "under construction" sign taped to my forehead today. This site's far from done but it's furnished enough to move into. My new bookshelves (the ones we ordered for my birthday) are finally here. It took me all of yesterday and this morning, on and off, and involved both hammers and petroleum jelly, but I've finally got all the little pegs in the holes, and the shelves set on them and am beginning to load them up with books. Yesterday, we decided to take my car to a party only to find out that a rear tire was very, very flat, so I got to take that off and get it fixed, too. (Notes to fellow car non-cognoscenti: Sears' car service place is open on Sunday, and they charged me all of $16 to fix the tire. $16! I can barely fill the tank on that car for that little cash -- in fact, I can't gas up my pickup for under $20.)

Meanwhile Rudder spent most of the morning digging out the narrow strip behind the pool, where some moron builder or former owner ran electrical wires through PVC pipe. This is not a great idea in an area where plant roots might grow into the pipe, or where later owners might want to dig out plants and put new ones in, or where a sprinkler system also runs. In this case, all three conditions are true. After he's got that fixed, next week we'll be putting new plants in. There are three palm trees there now, so we need something mid-sized to fill the gaps and then some ground cover in front. I'm thinking maybe candytuft for that, but we're also considering agave (native to this area) for the midsized, and it seems like a weird combination. Another possibliity is ivey or something drooping in large urns. I like the idea of candytuft around that. Maybe low desert grasses instead if we go with the agave.