[and the after-birthday…]

September 28th we and the dogs made what has become the formerly daily now annual trek

up through the cactus gardens and past Dazzle’s Last Stick [fourteen years next January*]

to the Lone Pine,

a much more difficult proposition than last year’s

though the views were equally fine**…

inspirational, etc.

We descended to lunch, collapse, recover and then began preparing [during which John and Roberta arrived, a “visit from friends” or “home invasion”, depending] the lavish celebratory [now traditional] birthday hors d’oeuvres which were pretty much laid out about the time Nancy and Mike showed up with, among other things, roast potatoes and ice cream as I was assembling the ultimately forgotten salad.  After all else and several bottles of prosecco we finished up fireside with N.’s homemade strawberry ice cream…

Next morning, after weathering the Unaccountable Chaos of Breakfast and delays numerous and mysterious, we eventually belatedly made it up the creek, again something once done daily,

for the first time this season to find scant evidence of fall color but ample

evidence of Water…pleasing to dogs.

The subsequent late lunch was followed by more time discussing the possibility of napping than actually napping [something having to do with two lawyers in the room] after which I snuck in a very brief peek at the studio, a cursory walking of dogs and we all then enjoyed an excellent pasta with John’s Famous Tomatoes and Gagliano’s sausages…tea by the fire after and not so early to bed. Sleepus interruptus, another chaotic breakfast, a foggy walk with J. while R. did business on the phone and then away they went in the rain through Colorado tourist country

to Bluff, Utah, while we went through the motions of relocating our lives before going up the hill for a farewell dinner with John [different John] and Carla, easy to hang with and though

the bada-bing after all those days of bread had a cumulative and not entirely salubrious effect it was a swell and relaxed evening.  Wrung out from days previous we slept twelve hours but then Leon, riotous as ever, arrived soon after breakfast to install the new kitchen faucet under

continuing chill and dampening skies. Thus Saturday became the first day in a week sans

people; a most welcome relief capped off by a rainbow as a bonus.  So now we’re looking

at two more days on our own before Dentistry, recovery, my brother’s visit and then outa here,

oh dear.  Phantom limb [below] courtesy of John Barr, a parting gift which once installed set off

the dogs no end…apparently they saw it as a snake eating the house. Or, being part Border Collies, the Wolf.  Woof, woof.

 

*Enshrined where she left it on her last walk at the National Forest boundary and there to this day.

**But conspicuously lacking in color this year.