Life Getting Back to Normal

Just done a sweep of the pool - darn acacia blossom is competing with the palo verde to fill it! In the course of my duties inspected pots. I have a total of 23 quail eggs in three nests! One may no longer be active but the other two are - flew up and scared the wits out of me - and Hamish the dog.

My huge pot of "what the heck let them multiply pay no attention to them" Asian lilies are about to bloom. Unfortunately it’s in the side courtyard off the study and only visible to me. Well that’s not so unfortunate.  I keep reminding myself that there is no sin in being nice to oneself.  (Is it a generational thing that we grandmothers were raised to be hard on ourselves?) When I moved to this house I dug up a bunch of the Asian lily bulbs, tossed them in a pot and forgot about them. Over the course of a year or so must have tried growing something else in the pot and added soil. Came back from Thailand and found a spectacular mass of blooms - no thanks to me - and so they continue. Not touching them.  Meanwhile the Iris that I slave over are doing NADA big time. I don’t think they like this house. I have divided and begged people to take the corms and every single one I’ve given away has bloomed triumphantly - a sort of thumb their elegant blossoms at me! Right now a close friend  has a stand of about 20 deep purple  and gold blooms, the product of corms I divided in October  - me, a stunted 6” of leaves.

Going to hit the nineties here tomorrow so I guess the AC may have to go on.  Saturday the bi-monthly dinner with close friends  and I'm hoping to eat outside - may be too warm. In the spirit of easy elegance found a BBC recipe that I used as inspiration  for an appetizer - took all of 10 minutes if that and should be good - little ramekins lined with smoked salmon and filled with a mixture of chopped avocado ( lots of lemon juice) goat cheese, flaked crab. They get turned out onto a bed of cucumber and watercress and drizzled with sweet chili sauce - we’ll see.  It worked, it worked!

’Tis the season for Fava beans ( .99cents a pound at Whole Foods ) so am doing a very, very simple pasta of fava beans with ricotta salata ( it’s a ricotta cheese that looks like a hard cheese, not a mush). Toying with the idea of making the pasta but since I only got as far as cleaning the kitchen counter tops and polishing the wood furniture today I may listen to my inner sensible person and rely on TJ’s lemon pepper papardelle.

Mom quail ( or it could be the dads, I read that they are a very liberated species) have returned to the nests so I’m going to lounge  on a lounger and get drunk ----- on the scent of jasmine!  Despite major frosts earlier in the years, the jasmine came through with a bumper crop of blossom this week.

Oh damn and blast. Poured a glass of wine , left it for a minute, came back to find about 40 little black critters  swimming in the glass - I’d forgotten ’tis also the season for them.