In which Kate waxes domestic… and gets tipsy on Champagne

After a second long week of working hard at the new job, I got a paycheck covering week 1, and woo-hooed all the way to Midtown Wine and Spirits where I bought a bottle of Taittinger Brut to celebrate. You’d think we’d feel obligated to drink such an elegant bottle of Champagne with an equally elegant meal, but no, we ate one of our favorite staples: pasta with hot sauce. Yum.

Woke up early yesterday wanting to cheer on the runners in the Country Music Marathon, but I was outside long before the Ethiopians and Kenyans were due to be in the neighborhood, so I got right to gardening. Weeded about 10,000 hackberry seedlings (I swear, hackberries must be the trashiest trees EVER) and a bunch of seedlings from the birdseed. Noted the overabundance of aphids on my tomato plants (waiting for my shipment of ladybugs to arrive!), and then it was time to go cheer on runners.

Walked by a neighbor’s house on the way back home (amidst the long lines of angry, detoured drivers trying to find their way through our quaint neighborhood to wherever) and she gave us a box full of cuttings from her yard, including some phlox and some tiger lilies, the latter I’m really excited about! I think I’m going to do a whole lily section of the garden at some point, what with the three resurrection lilies I got from my parents’ yard as a memorial to my dad the day he died, the hundreds of daylilies around our house, these tiger lilies, and maybe some stargazers and other lilies. It’s a happy-making thought. Maybe an iris garden, too. Lovely!

For lunch, Karsten and I ate veggie burgers with baby greens from our very own garden (the seedlings needed thinning anyway!), his mostly spinach and various lettuces, mine heavy with broccoli sprouts and basil. It was so amazingly delicious, we both kept moaning with pleasure.

After lunch, we thought it might start raining, so we quickly drove to Gardens of Babylon at the Farmers Market to pick up two more boxwoods (we’re gradually replacing the ones in the would-be hedge that didn’t make it through last winter) and find some little blue and yellow flowering plants to perk up my blue and yellow office. And then over to Bongo Java Roasting Company to pick up some organic / fair trade / shade grown / locally-roasted / locally-sold coffee, and to the Turnip Truck for some soy yogurt and other groceries.

And then my energy was all used up. So the rest of the day was just lazing around, reading, relaxing, playing with cats… you know. Normal stuff. And then pizza for dinner, garnished with fresh oregano — you guessed it — from the garden.

So anyway, that was the gist of yesterday, and now today, since it’s raining, I’m just relaxing indoors and thinking about giving myself a pedicure and maybe taking in a matinee of “Thank You For Smoking” or “American Dreamz,” the latter looking a bit fluffy, but I think the filmmakers deserve my money for coming up with that tagline: “Imagine a country where more people vote for their next pop idol than for their next president.” Ooh, snap!

Hope everyone else is having a relaxing weekend!