A Busy Saturday

This is the view from our living room window, looking over the patio and through a gap in the trees to our neighbor's garden. Her gigantic clematis is in full bloom now, a cloud of white. It also climbs up the wall between both our houses, but the Russians assiduously pick it away. They have a thing about vines.

So, remember our discussion yesterday about using the phrase "running over" to describe an unanswered phone? As in, "The phone's running over"? Well, I Googled it, and even Google seems unfamiliar with this usage. The only thing I got back was information about what to do if you've run over your phone with a car. I suspect it is an old-fashioned phrase and maybe a New England thing (since the author of the book where I read it was originally from Boston). We may never know.

I got a lot done yesterday, despite the fact that the weather couldn't decide what to do. We had blue sky, then a light rain rain, then more blue sky, then light rain. I spent the morning cleaning the windows in the bedroom and dining room -- not just the glass but the frames and windowsills and all the gewgaws on them. They get surprisingly dirty and cobwebby over the winter. I only did the inside -- I'm toying with hiring someone to do the outside of all our windows. I've never done that, but I really don't have the equipment to reach the dining room windows from the outside -- they're too buried in shrubbery.

And yes! I mowed the lawn! It still looks patchy at this time of year but it's thickening up. You can see that back left corner that we're leaving unmowed -- our own little meadow.

Mrs. Kravitz, who I haven't seen in ages, was out gardening as well. She had a friend (or employee?) mowing her lawn at the same time I was doing ours. God forbid Mrs. K -- who is younger than I am -- should push a mower.

One of my ongoing goals is to reduce the number of flowerpots we have sitting around. We really do have a ridiculous quantity, particularly when I pull the dahlias out of the shed (there are seven of them, if I remember correctly). That one sitting out in the middle of the lawn is basically empty, except for a dandelion and some forget-me-nots -- it's holding a space for the avocado tree, which sits there during the summer.

And then we had hail!

(Those are not the windows I cleaned -- hence the smudges, which are mostly rain and condensation on the glass.)

Remember how I said our daffodils were being devoured by slugs? This is what I mean. Honestly! As my former co-worker Tabatha used to say, "You gotta laugh to keep from cryin'."

Finally, Dave and I watched "Poor Things" on Amazon last night. This is the movie that won Emma Stone an Academy Award for best actress. It was without a doubt one of the weirdest movies I've ever seen. Very creative and visually intriguing, but also unpleasant -- at least I thought so. I can't say I loved it, but it wins points for originality.