I’m tempted to find it ironic that I leave this house so much more than the last. I don’t think I could even count the number of places I’ve been in the last two weeks: restaurants and food stores, hardware stores and…hmm, I wonder what the generic name is for stores like Target and Bed Bath & Beyond? Well, plenty of them, too. Ha, and that doesn’t even include the pool supply stores. Oh, the pool supply stores! Yes, how I’ve loved them.

I’d guess that all that will slow down a little now that we’re more settled, and once school starts, but actually it is one of the things that I’m loving about our new home. There’s so much more here. Yes, I could have gone to every place I’ve been from the last house (and did, sometimes) but it was a trek. To go anywhere except the grocery store was an hour commitment for the driving. Oh, and the food–well, our “easy” sit-down restaurants there were Perkins and Chilis and while I don’t mind either, I don’t mind them a lot more if I eat at them very very rarely.
Yesterday, I went to the farmer’s market and it’s the prettiest farmer’s market I’ve ever seen. Considering how crowded it was at 8:30, I’m not sure I want to visit it at 11, but it was lovely. I bought some lemon parsley pasta (which we haven’t tried yet), peaches and green beans, and best of all, a container pot of mixed flowers for the front porch and another of rosemary. I told the saleswoman that I was death to plants so wanted something that had a chance of surviving me, so she carefully picked out a pot with three perennials, including one that looks like beach grass, and told me all the others plants (four or five of them) would die, but that would leave more room for the surviving three. I suspect, knowing my history with plants, that they’ll all die, but the beach grass might survive. I can hope, anyway.
I put the rosemary on the patio table and between the smell of cedar from the shower and the smell of the plant, the patio smells so good that I could sit there all day and just breathe. I ate dinner there in the early evening–a plate of fresh bread and interesting cheese and some smoked salmon and grapes and a glass of San Pellegrino water (eventually upgraded to a glass of red wine, the Menage a Trois that I like so much) and yes, it sounds pretentious, I’ll have to balance it out with a microwave pizza or some leftover Chinese food today, but truly, it was delicious.