Bocce Ball

The courts were all in full swing. It's funny because these players are all men, and there is a group of men who gather in a circle under a tree on chairs they bring with them. We're convinced it's either a drug rehab group of some sort or a religious group...maybe both. I tried to walk by pretending not to eavesdrop and one man was holding forth about how he started his day with meditation and reading, so I'm still not really any the wiser. It's not really any of my business. I just makes me happy to see people using this beautifully maintained park. Apparently that hasn't always been the case....it was used for drug transactions and avoided by everyone else.

We planted an agave in our succulent garden by the front door and made the rookie mistake of forgetting that they will still grow a lot. It was very healthy looking but much too close to the house. These plants have an incredible root system which could wreak havoc with the foundation, so we decided to ask Gustavo to see if he could move it.He put it it the space under the kitchen window, but it is kind of the worse for wear, and once agave fronds are damaged they don't recover. 

 Another succulent we planted has kept to a good size but its babies have popped up everywhere and I got tired of asking John to remove them and decided to do it myself.  What seemed like a fairly simple atask wound up being an out and out battle with dirt, roots and spines. Many tools were put to use. My respect for Gustavo, who succeeded in gettting  a rather large agave out of a rather small space without killing it, remains undimmed. My ten minute task wound up taking hours and our succulent garden is now missing two plants because another one which hasn't been looking too good had virtually no roots at all. 

Gardening is a mystery. 

John just brought down another bowlful of tomatoes and another fugitive zucchini the size of a log. I must go look for my recipe for zucchini pasta. Do I still have that device called a 'spiralizer' that turns zucchini into corkscrew shaped 'pasta'? The tomatoes can become the pasta sauce....in fact they were supposed to already but I didn't get around to it and now there are lots more....