Auggie and Anders were spraying their water bottles in the backyard this afternoon.  I was busy trying to pot the new magenta iceplants I had foolishly bought just before leaving tomorrow, so they wouldn't dry out over the weekend.

The boys left and the garden became quiet.

A butterfly fluttered down to rest on one of my purple-pink flowers (which I don't know the name of).  Does the butterfly have a name for this flower?  Maybe she says, "Look!  There's one!" (whatever it is) 

Robert and I were out walking and we passed a woman on the sidewalk.  "Do you want to see something cute?" she said. (Of course, my mind immediately assessed that she looked harmless.  My age, brown outfit, no visible weapons!!)

She took us over to a tree and pointed out the tiniest little nest--with a hummingbird mother sitting in it.  Very hard to see, and about the size of 1/2 of a chicken egg.  With her head and bill pointed skyward, the hummingbird mother seemed to be meditating quietly...waiting...for Mother's Day.

Spring fever has hit.  I asked Tyler to help me clear away some tangles in my back yard to bring in more sunlight.  The next thing I knew, we'd cleared an old dead tree and trimmed back the big Joshua plan that has been lunging out toward freedom for ten years.  Gone!

Now I have more a more open area up to the back fence, and my Buddha sits peacefully on his rock pedestal, anchoring my garden.

I'm growing 4 pepper plants.  I am always mad for grilling peppers.  They are so delicious.

A couple of days ago I had Anders over for two hours.  He immediately goes to my craft drawer and picked out the old Amazon.com cardboard insert I had saved for a project.  When he held it up to his face and chest, it looked like some kind of body armour, so we went with that idea.

I cut out a slit for his eyes (complete with a flap to close down under attack) and we put green paper on the chest, and inserted pipe cleaner "antenna" and "alien sensors" . He always knows exactly what he wants--such certainty at the age of 5!  So I had to rummage around for some old Velcro strips to make a fastener on the back of the mask.  It turned out perfect!

It's so relaxing to make a project and not have any plan, but be in the moment with the stuff you have in front of you.  Make it work.  It's so much fun.  Costs almost nothing.  Save those cardboard inserts if you have kids around.  They know what to do with them.

Eliza, Ander's mom, and my daughter-in-law is giving a talk at her college class today on the benefits individually and globabally of  eating and buying local food.  I'm so proud of her! She's started buying only organic produce from local farms and avoiding imported foods and produce.

Robert and I have been doing lots of research on ways to handle and heal eczema for someone in our circle.  If anyone reading this has any verifiable, eczema-specific advice or knowledge, I'd appreciate hearing from you--you can write to me at carol22@sonic.net.  I'm open to synchronicity on this!

I had a very grounding week--paid my taxes, had my electrical panel repaired, bought two new planting boxes, four little hopeful pepper plants, and some daisies and succulents. 

Robert and I cooked dinner yesterday for Gunther and Eliza and Anders and Auggie.  We had fried oysters, chicken, rice, bread, salad, and mangoes and blueberries for dessert.  We played the Nature show we had recorded on cephlapods, particularly the Humboldt squid.  We had saved it for Anders who loves things squid.  (Gunther and Eliza went out to dinner with an old friend on Thursday and he had squid stuffed with sausage.)

Lots of walking all weekend.  I seem to be using the car less and less.

After watching every species of animal eating one another in all these hours of nature shows (Planet Eart is spectacular) it seems the purpose of life is eating.  What else is one to think (I know-- procreation--which leads to more eating.)  They show the eating more than the procreating. 

I arrived home on Friday--and very happy to be back.  Gunther and Eliza prepared a wonderful Middle Eastern lamb and chicken feast yesterday for Easter.  Eliza's mom, Carmen, is here for the week from San Diego, and we also had Steven and Marian and their two kids over for an Easter egg hunt and dinner.  The weather cleared up just in time!  

I had an interesting talk with Steven (while he was helping Luke, his 2-year old with his log-like building block set.)  He's returning to India (the whole family went last year) to do more research on Bhopal, and the organizations there which have been taking environmental action since the 1960's.  "People think it's a new idea to be challenging the multi-national companies," he said, "but they've been doing it in India for a long time." 

Eliza has decided to only buy food that is locally grown. "A lot of pollution goes into the air because of transporting food," she told me.   

Still pondering so many things about Japan--relationships, communication styles, projects.  Jet-lag kept me up and I started reading the book Fumiko had given me last year, Polite Lies, On being a woman caught between cultures, by Kyoko Mori.  It's quite interesting and makes me wonder about how my friends see me there!  It seems to me to be so easy to be rude without knowing it although I keep trying to understand the most obvious customs.  

Before that I finished the book that Banana Yoshimoto gave me when I met her in Tokyo--Argentine Hag.  It's very good.  It's also illustrated in a most interesting way that complements the story.

I don't feel like working today, but I have many things to catch up on.

This morning there were five patches of rainbows, like little rocket ships, on my bedroom ceiling.