Gardening, "True Grit" - January 14-16, 2011

Friday evening, January 14, 2011: Pizza and movie night. We watched our Netflix selection, "Agora," about a noted female Greek scholar, mathematician and teacher of philosophy named Hypathia of Alexandria, Egypt. The film takes place around the end of fourth-century Roman Egypt which is rapidly becoming Christian. Agora is the meeting place or square where early conflicts between philosophers/pagans and Christians took place. We learned about ancient Egypt in a time of change, the looting of the library at Alexandria, the violence that accompanied the clash of beliefs, and subsequent burning of historic and philosophic documents. Intertwined with the history is a story of Hypathia's slave who was falling in love with her. He had to decide if he wanted freedom or to remain her slave so he could be near her. The movie was rather dark and violent, but we learned a lot. I give it two stars out of five.

Saturday, January 15, 2011: Spent the day hanging out around the house. Steve, my brother-in-law, installed our new air conditioner. Thank you very much. While he was doing the install, I made a loaf of banana nut bread for his family and a loaf of nut bread for us. (I ran out of over-ripe bananas.)

Saturday evening we went to Aloha Salads for dinner where we shared an Aloha Tuna sandwich and a Goddess Salad. Very good.

Sunday, January 16, 2011: Weekly local farmers' market at 7:25 am. A couple of the vendors are missing: one stopped coming, don't know what happened to the other. All my favorite vendors are still there. Stocked up on papayas, bananas, beets, green beans, cucumbers, celery and broccoli.

After returning home, I checked e-mail and Facebook, played online Scrabble, then gardened for 3-1/2 hours. I cut back one of our palms on the front corner of our lot, then pruned the hibiscus along our fence line. I filled three green recycling bins with yard debris. Weather was very pleasant and I was in shade for the two hours or so. There was a bird singing in the tree near me; it had the most beautiful song. I never did see it to figure out what kind of bird it was.

Sunday afternoon Bob and I went to see "True Grit" (the new Coen brothers version). I thoroughly enjoyed the story and thought the movie moved along at a good clip with action, humor and interesting characters. Caution, though, violence is pretty graphic in parts. (I had to turn my head away a few times.) Four stars out of five, for me. I think Bob might not have liked it as much as I did. 

Sunday evening, dinner was at Taco del Mar.

As an aside: We live on a cul-de-sac and people must be dropping off their unwanted cats. Numerous feral cats live in the two vacant lots and wash at the end of the street. I've seen cats coming out of the storm drains too. There are minimum 10-15 cats out there, probably more (but those are the ones I see). They come in our yard and drink and fish in our little fish pond. I'm always out there chasing them away. It's mating season here which means many raucous cat fights at night. Seems I'm always running out to the back yard and clapping my hands and making loud noises to scare them off. Reminder to self--call Humane Society to find out if they trap them. They're driving my indoor cats bonkers.

Time to watch my DVR'd shows.

'Til next time....