A Day with Friends

It rained significantly last night and this morning. Much as I have been enjoying the warm weather, the first rain of the season is always rather pleasant. The parched earth and the desert plants get a drink and also get dusted off, the air is washed clean and the sky is full of interesting clouds.

It seemed a good time to vacuum and dust and clean in anticipation of guests later today. I'm pretty sure if it hadn't been raining, I would have given things a spit and a promise and gone off to do something outside. I did put on my boots and go up to the zinnia bed for some fresh flowers, and got involved in removing all the fava bean plants--a second crop this year which sprouted from the stems that OilMan dug back into the soil. Now we have enough lava beans for dinner tomorrow along with the carrots and eggplants that were developing nicely despite the fava bean cover.

Tonight, however, we are going to pick up a case of wine at Medlock Ames Winery and then out to dinner with our friends from Berkeley (Steve and Marcia) and our friends from Santa Rosa (Jerry and Mary). They met about twelve years ago when we all went to the Lake O'Hara Lodge in the Canadian Rockies together. OilMan and I both had to take to our beds with the flu almost the moment we had unpacked our bags in our quaint cabin, abandoning our friends to get acquainted with each other as best they could. They enjoyed the hiking, and the excellent meals, while we poured the soup delivered to us by the attentive staff down the loo, unable to face eating it. By the time we tottered out of bed on the last day for an abbreviated hike, they were fast friends.

I wonder if we will just pick up where we left off in the mountains of Canada twelve years ago.