Brief update

After a couple of weekends of back-twinging labor, copious amounts of seed, and a fortuitous run of really hideous (i.e. rainy) weather, our back yard now actually has a yard.  It’s still too fragile to walk on, but it’s gotten past the point where it merely looks like our ground is moldy.  I had no idea that brand-new grass was so electrically green!

Also, the rain has encouraged the passion flower to really put some growth on, and the one remaining poppy to bloom.  The other one would probably be blooming, too, but a friend of ours who was helping put down the grass seed decided - without asking - that the poppy was a weed and raked the living daylights out of it, knocking off the only seed head.  ::sigh:: 

We went to the Hay Festival in Hay-on-Wye on both last Friday and this Monday.  Last Friday, A and I saw Barry Cryer and Colin Szell speak/play the piano; it was a lot of fun.  Monday, A, J and I went to see Jasper Fforde speak.  I must say, for a man whose books leave no doubt as to his utter madness, he was remarkably coherent.  ::grin::  He read a bit from First Among Sequels, which A and I are determined to read now, and then from his next book, which won’t be out for another fourteen months, called Shades of Grey.  It sounds very interesting - a dystopian view of a future England with the classes divided by who can see what color.  Those who can see the color purple rule, those who can see only red are next-to-last, and the “achromatics,” who can’t see any colors at all, are the untouchables.  ::shaking her head::  Where does he come up with these things?