Passiflora

It just figures that on the day before we are expecting house guests, the day OilMan planned to work in the garden planting all the new plants wilting in the patio, the toilet breaks. So instead he spent all morning tracking down a certain replacement piece called a "flapper valve"

The day dawned sunny and warm, but the forecast is for rain tomorrow. It's still quite warm, but the wind came up as I was trying to photograph this extraordinary passion flower on a vine outside our bedroom door. Now the clouds are gathering, and it is no longer hard to imagine that it might rain.

After a couple of aborted trips to the hardware store, the plumbing supply place finally yielded the right flapper valve and it was a matter of a few moments to install and test it, with time to spare to plant some of the plants and fill up two new veggie boxes with dirt. I'm not quite sure what he plans to plant in them, but I fear it might be lots of beets!

The crush is in full swing at this time of year in wine country and the roads are full of trucks delivering boxes to the fields, or carrying the full ones back to the wineries to be crushed. We drove to our favorite VJB winery/deli for a glass of wine and deli food for dinner, so no cooking tonght! A good start to the weekend.