Zinnia and Jersey Tiger

Finally, FINALLY, a zinnia is making its appearance! It's taken a couple of months for the plants to get big enough to bloom -- when I look back at how tiny they were when I first planted them out, I guess that's not surprising.

We've actually done OK when it comes to seedling survival. I lost three zinnias almost right away, all to slugs, but two more zinnias, my four sunflowers and my cosmos have grown well. I planted an additional two zinnias a bit later that also seem fine. So we should have some more flowers coming up.

Dave and I went all the way down to Greenwich yesterday -- basically the opposite end of London -- to have lunch with our friends Mike and Sally, who live down that way. We hadn't seen them in more than a year, and before that it had been two years, so we really need to get better about spending more time together. Three of the four of us are retired now, so maybe that will help!

Anyway, we had lunch at the local Banana Tree (one of a chain of Asian food restaurants), and I had a yummy curry and two lychee mojitos. (They had a two-for-one deal on the drinks, and I could hardly let that second one go to waste, right?) I'd hoped to also visit my favorite junk shop in London, which is right down the road from there, but I had to get back home by 4 p.m. for a call with  my financial advisor. We had to skedaddle.

And can you believe I didn't take a single picture on that whole outing? I must be losing my touch.

That's why you're getting more pictures of the garden.

When I took the trash out yesterday, I found a Jersey tiger moth sitting atop the bins. It seemed like a bad place to be, so I gingerly moved it to a nearby buddleia plant. I think it must have been newly emerged, or maybe just damp, because it seemed a bit clumsy and uncoordinated -- I tried to prompt it to fly so I could show you its beautiful underwings, and instead it just flopped over on its back. Message to moth: Don't do THAT when a bird is hanging over you! Anyway, hopefully once it dried out it became a bit more agile.

Dave and I had a weird experience watching an episode of "The Golden Girls" last night. (Yes, we watch "The Golden Girls." We are gay men of a certain age and it's required.) Blanche said to Dorothy and Rose, "I am abhorred," and of course that became the basis of a joke. But I think using "abhorred" that way is grammatically incorrect, isn't it? I don't think a person can BE abhorred, except by someone else; I think they have to abhor something. It's a transitive verb that needs an object.

In fact, we weren't even sure what she was saying at first. I had to put on the closed captioning to understand her -- a sure sign that I am becoming my parents!