Flower Friday : : Daphne

I liked this corner of our garden and the juxtaposition of the hydrangea, still in it's fall color and the daphne odora, a late winter bloomer. John's grandmother used to have several Daphne plants which captivated me with their fragrance. We planted one next to our front steps in Berkeley where it thrived for years. Then one winter we had a very prolonged period of freezing weather which killed a lot of our plants including the daphne and a beautiful white wisteria that covered our front porch with long delicate blossoms every spring. We replanted both of them, but the replacements never took and we wound up replacing the daphne with a hydrangea. It's interesting that all three things are doing well in our inhospitable soil and frequent drought conditions here in Santa Rosa.

I don't know what it says about the quality of my life right now, but I spent hours at my computer trying to order a trash can! It has to go in the kitchen, which is also the living room, so it has to be decent looking. It also has to fit within a very prescribed space. It is amazing how many kitchen trash cans with lids there are out there. All this because I don't want to go through a door to the top of the basement stairs every time I have something that goes in the recycling....John thinks I'm crazy but he just leaves his trash on top of the kitchen counter, so he clearly doesn't want to go out there either. He is of the opinion that you leave things around until you have accumulated enough to warrant a trip to wherever they belong.  I suspect he also hasn't failed to notice that I don't love piles of trash on my kitchen counter and take things out before he feels he has accumulated an appropriate amount to do it himself....

The new stainless steel trash can arrives on Sunday. It cost as much as every single trash  can I have ever bought in my life combined. For even more money I could have gotten one you talk to to open, or one that is essentially just a handsome exterior for a plastic bag. The concept of wrapping garbage in a plastic bag seems almost as  silly wrong as talking to your trash can