Flower Friday : : Petunias

The nearest streetlights are about a mile away but their glow is reflected off the cloud/smoke cover making the sky look red. I woke up in the middle of the night to see what seemed in my sleep addled state like a rerun of the Tubbs fire. By the time I woke up enough to figure out what it was, there was no going back to sleep. At least I'm reading an interesting book called The Silk Roads: A New History of the World. It is well written and very interesting but I think I'll still be reading it when the world comes to an end....

I've been trying to come up with a good black background for pictures and think I found one which is convenient but limited. I had just picked up a couple  of a couple of petunias, victims of  OilMan's  digging explorations for for the source of a leak when the phone rang. As I got caught up with an old friend, it occurred to me that my yoga pants are black and might be just the thing. Good thing I had my camera with me. The bonus was the light....

We have a very complicated irrigation system (17 valves if that means anything) much of which is on a steep hill and almost all of which is buried. We have recently discovered a leak, measurable in gallons per hour as the water drips out of a pipe underneath the bird feeders. When we first moved to this house, OilMan attempted to locate someone who had a drawing of where everything is, but nobody, not even the landscape architect, seemed to know. It seems that something is always leaking but it is almost impossible to ascertain the source of the leak. OilMan undaunted, semi-daunted is applying a combination of , scientific method, spread sheet and ditch digging to the problem. He was awake this morning too. While I read about the history of the world, he thought about the irrigation system.

Our housekeeper, seeing him digging up the petunias said, 'You should change his name from OilMan to SoilMan....'

We have a series of neighborhood parties this weekend to send off our Italian neighbor, Daniella, and her husband, Federico, who is Spanish*. They are moving to Southern California and we will certainly miss them.

*extra