House and Garden

The hot water in the master bath had become increasingly unreliable. The twin townhome behind our house had a similar problem several years ago. We learned from their experience that the pipes for that bathroom run diagonally under the living room and up the back south wall up to the second floor bathroom. (Why such a convoluted route? We can only surmise that it had to do with NOT drilling a hole for a pipe through the earthquake beam that runs across the middle of our house between the floors.)

We followed the pipe and heard a very bad gurgling sound coming from this corner of the living room. No, it was not coming from the subwoofer (wrapped in the Indian ikat fabric).

Unlike our back neighbor, the leak was not in the middle of the living room floor. It was accessible from the outside wall. Now, to find a mason who can repair the brick facing.







Iris helped me do a little spring cleanup in the garden today. She is learning to distinguish between the things we want to grow and the weeds. She was disappointed that the alliums we planted last Fall did not come up.


Years ago, I planted some columbines. Even though my gardening book says they are biennals, they keep coming up. At least, the red California one does. The blue Colorado columbine stopped coming back. It is like the flowers know where they belong. The blue one by my front door in Boulder invariably came back up each summer. I took this picture with a flash just before sunset.

I took another picture without the flash. What a difference.

Another gratuitous shot of the garden. I do love it when the sea pinks come back each summer.


Iris and I even harvested some food.

There was a famous gardening article about the $4000 (or some astronomical figure) tomato. I don't want to calculate how much this strawberry cost. That is besides the point. We grow food so Iris feels a connection to the food chain.