Flower Friday. : : Allium

My penguins seem destined to stand and contemplate the latest arrangement and wonder what the heck it is this time. We have these very prolific allium plants and I decided to go out and brave the bees to cut some. Honeybees are pretty accommodating and unlikely to get too exercised as long as I don't cut a flower that is occupied or step on one. I tiptoed around, gingerly reaching down to the bottom of the stalks to cut quite a handful. They are in a jar of water inside a little cloth basket that Dana purchased in a linen shop in Italy. I think they are intended for bread, but I think this one is much too pretty to be stuck in a drawer.
The extra is my helper, artistically situated between the sedums and the alliums.

Gail and Bob weren't at coffee this morning because Gail went home to England for a wedding and Bob decided after much mulling and mind changing, to go with her. Tobi and Dan came and we talked about solar batteries versus generators for backup power, insurance companies, beekeeping, irrigation issues, canning tomatoes and pet sitting our childrens' feral cats. Maggie showed up just as Dan and Tobi were leaving so we wound up staying for another hour talking to her.

Just as I was getting ready for lunch a guy named Luis came round to check our air conditioner. It's fine, but he reminded us that our heater is on its last legs. He said there were no holes in the heat exchanger but that it was showing signs of wear and that if it does leak it will leak carbon monoxide, something we definitely want to avoid. We then discussed 'Oppenheimer', Spike's life history, and, at my request, the cost of a new furnace. Not something we really wanted to contemplate right now. But new regulations set to go into effect next year will raise the cost of a new furnace by 20%. This was all offered rather diffidently by Luis, so I don't think he was doing a hard sell. 

I'm still waiting for a shipment of fabrics which seem to be making their way here via tortoise, but I was able to put together a couple of squares before there was another knock on the door. I thought John was around to open the door this time, so I trudged down the hall to open the door to the guy from the company that sprays around the house for ants mosquitoes and yellow jackets. He said the latter are very difficult to get rid of unless he can find the nest (in the ground 'probably in an old gopher hole'). They have a program for $80/month to control yellowjackets. I said he came on the wrong day to tell me that and he said they'd be gone in another month or two anyway. Then he wanted to know Spike's life story. He was a very nice young man and assured me that they use only organic botanical oils, but I'm wondering, where the hell is John? 

I feel a conversation coming on about how long do we think we want to live here? We have talked about moving to a smaller property in town, but we never really decide anything other than the fact that we love this house but the upkeep of the property is considerable and John has to be willing to figure out what he needs in the way of help. 

The questions of aging, as most readers already know, seem to become more complicated....maybe we'll ask the penguins what they think.