Flower Friday : : Columbine

Too many British mysteries on television before bedtime caused me to awaken in a cold sweat and a very disturbed state of mind after dreaming that I was in a house/place that seemed to change everybody's personalities into evil. I was forced to plunge a very long hat pin into the chest of the shadowy figure of a man who was threatening me. All I could tell from his silhouette was that he was paunchy and had a strange hairstyle....You may think I'm kidding you but I'm not. I think the degree to which the dreadful man has entered our  my subconscious is pretty shocking. I take it to mean that I am prepared to keep fighting. for the things I believe in. I hope it doesn't mean I will be wielding a hat pin or any other sort of deadly weapon since I certainly don't believe in them.

It has been great to see the sun all today today without a single drop of rain. The irrigation guy didn't show up this morning so OilMan proposed that we go to Sebastopol and pick up some ceanothus plants he had ordered from a nursery over there. We began with fish stew and ceviche with a 'roots and shoots' salad at Handline , which features a sort of Mexican/Asian/ California coastal fusion cuisine.

I didn't even suggest stopping at Tamarind, a dress shop in the Barlow which I like to frequent and OilMan most definitely doesn't. Instead, we went to Sebastopol Hardware, an old fashioned, sprawling hardware store with stock ranging from kitchen goods to nails and screws, cleaning and canning supplies to bath mats and toilet seats, batteries, garden equipment, and even a tiny sewing center. There are many people in red vests waiting to give knowledgeable answers to  questions and guide the confused.

We came home with some cunning little kitchen clips, two wooden kitchen spoons made from olive wood, a red dishtowel with a fine looking rooster on it, two potholders, a package of pot scrubbers, some gardening gloves, four gopher baskets and a giant bag of salt for the water softener.

We also had a long and thorough conversation with a woman with pigtails and a red vest who seems to be in charge of cleaning products. She highly recommended a laundry soap that has been around for years, works in a low suds front loading washing machine and doesn't damage the aquifer, and a cleaning product that she uses to clean her oven. We even bought that despite the fact that  we have a self cleaning oven. She says it works well on 'anything dirty'....I promised to report back to her. I have put a picture of the cleaning aisle in the extras....

If I am a bit remiss in commenting just now, it is because once again I am futzing around with my photos. I have managed to delete a couple of thousand pictures, wondering all the while why I am bothering since  supposedly I put all of them on the cloud so I would have plenty of storage. But apparently not...

The Columbine are in a pot outside our patio door. They grow wild all over the Sierra and remind me of backpacking. Thanks to Biker Bear for continuing the challenge.