This Week in Five Faves

We are nearing the end of summer break for The Professor.  In fact, he has ridden his bike to the university campus a couple of times to spend the day in his office.  It definitely feels weird to not have lesson plans looming over me, to not be thinking subconsciously all the time about source materials, assignment sheets and checklists.  But I think I can deal with it. {insert large smiley face here}  The weeks are different in summer and in retirement.  Every day but Sunday feels like Saturday.  Indeed, The Professor calls Monday the First Saturday, and Tuesday Second Saturday, and so on.  It takes more effort for me to focus on getting something done and also on remembering what happened on Fourth Saturday.  That doesn't make it any less important.  Here are my Friday Fave Fives.

1.  My Garden.  I consider my little garden to be a place of serenity and calmness.  This week we planted a couple of fall crops-- dinosaur kale and red carrots.  I do love me an experiment.  The kale I planted in the spring and yes, it does grow to dinosaur size.

2.  Butterflies and Lizards.  The monarch butterflies are hatching.  It's a good thing it's that time in their life cycle because the caterpillars have eaten every green thing off my three milkweed plants.  Finally, I caught a photo of one.  They fly and flit around constantly after they hatch because they are trying to dry their wings.

And the lizards are so cute.  Here is a baby lizard.  He couldn't have been more than 1.5 inches long.

3.  Yarn.  The movie.  One evening our local yarn shop sponsored/arranged for the showing of an indie film titled "Yarn".  The Professor and I decided we'd make it a date--dinner at our fave Mexican restaurant (Sharky's) and then drive up to Ventura to watch the movie.  I was amused that of course I saw many of my guild friends there, but most of us had knitting in our hands or our bags.  An added bit--there were a surprising number of men in the audience and not all of them were husbands accompanying their wives.

4.  Cooler weather.  This week our temperatures have been Ventura County perfect.  I know so many people are either very hot or very cold, but here it has been high 70s, morning coastal fog to keep things cool, sunny days after the cloud cover breaks and evaporates.

5.  My computer desktop screen rotates photos from my files.  This week one appeared from the trip we took to England several years ago.  So I looked back at those files and 'relived' our trip.  I love the memories!  Bath, England.

Bonus quote of the day:  "The problem with a good book is that you want to finish the book but you don't want to finish the book."  So true!