“Don’t drink,” the Landlady said, as I was leaving the house.

“Don’t drink? On the Fourth of July?! That would be un-American!”. So I went forth to do my patriotic duty. I did it a little too well because when I finally wobbled home I was carrying two large bags of fireworks which I really couldn’t afford to have bought.

Never mind, the boys and I had good fun setting them off and a young friend of theirs from down the street heard the noise and rushed up to join us. (The adult persons in the house were not too amused by it all, but …. oh well.)

On the bus, riding to the University, I had an amazing idea about what to write. When I arrived at my stop I had totally forgotten it. Aren’t you lucky?

I spent the night with Tiger Woods. Only in a dream, alas, and not as intimate a one as I would have wished. Even so, I woke thinking I had been given a special treat. What a nice man.

That bed is now going to cost me eighty dollars more a month. The State ordered an audit of social services and they, not in the least surprisingly, told them to get rid of people who really no longer deserve assistance. Jump up and down, wave!

Oh well. I’ll have to give up my weekly visits to the Gold Gate Lounge. That alone will save forty dollars a month.

We’ve had a festive time at the Little House in the Valley. Handsome Son celebrated his seventeenth birthday with a rather raucous stag party. They took over the second kitchen, the garage, the driveway, but left my chair on the front porch vacant. So I could go sit and watch, trying not to be to lascivious. (Wow, I remember how to spell that absurd word.)

A few days later he graduated from high school. The Landlady invited me to the ceremony but I declined, saying I thougt it was a family occasion. If he had asked me, I of course would have gone, but I’m sure the thought never entered his mind, nor is there any reason it should have. I did later shake his hand and congratulate him. Sweet.

Meanwhile, we have a new teenager in the house. The twelve-year-old made it on the Solstice. A Solstice Baby. I am impressed.

Everything is relatively well now that June is busting out all over. Just taking a short break from this enduring enterprise.

Is there no end to the pests? First the snails, then the Huns, now SLUGS. Yeukh, what nasty critters. I gathered them up and threw them into the street. Just in case they survived the morning traffic and tried to return, I refreshed the snail/slug poison around the perimeter of my turf. When you pick them up they leave a nasty slime on your hand and it took hot water, soap and some vigorous scraping to get rid of it.

Really. It might just have been easier (and cheaper) to buy veggies from the market.

Ma Nature didn’t help much by giving us a night of very heavy rain, leaving everything looking rather battered. But then she isn’t being very nice to any of us right now. We are engulfed in horrible air filled with crap from the volcano. It reminds me of my high school days in the LA basin, complete with burning eyes and runny nose. When I heard the rain start I was a bit alarmed by its fierceness but thought that at least it would clear the air of the vog. No such luck. It’s just damp vog now.

I’m going to be in trouble with the Husband again. I recently got scolded, all day long, for having left a muddy smear on the little concrete ramp leading to the front porch. This morning I did even worse and left one on the garage floor. Hey man, we’re farmers, not Dutch housewives scrubbing their front steps every morning. No, I’d better not say that.

I’ve changed my first-star-I-see wish to “a place of my own and to see the Sleeptalker again”. Of course the stars won’t be so dumb as to not realize I mean both, in the same time and place. Oh yes. Oh yes.

While that Sony radio was playing dead I used the Coby to revive a habit from some time back, listening to AM talk radio. I can never take much of it for any length of time but I actually managed to sit through an entire Rush Limbaugh broadcast. Of course with election season well upon us, all of these people can rarely talk of anything else and they all hate the three main candidates. Limbaugh isn’t, I think, an ignorant man. In fact, he’s probably quite intelligent. But he’s so locked into his opinions and consumed with being The Rush Limbaugh that he often just sounds very stupid indeed. I was more than happy to return to Public Radio when the Sony revived.

I did think it might be fun to start a separate blog, Panther Talk Radio, where I could rant away about current events like those AM folks do. But then I’d probably end up sounding as dumb as they do.

One less thing on that future shopping list. Fortunately, before tossing it in the trash (or buying a replacement) I tried that Sony radio one more time. It worked. How peculiar. Now if only that confounded computer would do the same.

Gardening goes on, inside, outside and in my dreams. I had reached a state of doldrums in Harvest Moon, failing several times to trigger an important next step even though I did what was supposed to be the key. It’s the wretched mines. There are four of them, each opening after the lowest level of the preceding one is reached. I struggled, bored, to the bottom of the third mine several times without realizing that I’d fallen through too many holes on the way and had missed a crucial event on a skipped level. That done, the ridiculous fourth mine opened. These things are the worst example of bad game writing I’ve yet seen in a DS game, especially in a Natsume one. Oh well, I struggle on since, as in Rune Factory, my young farmer has become a multimillionaire and is able to hire pixie crews to take care of all the routine farm chores so has nothing better to do than grumble his way through the mines.

What makes them especially absurd is that nothing in them is worth very much. Even gold and silver aren’t worth as much as spinach. Wish that were true in my real garden. I’d really be urging those collard greens to get on with it if so. I expected them to grow much more quickly than they have, but no, they appeared soon but are taking their time about getting to harvest size.

My French reader asked about that Hallowe’en icon, the pumpkin. I did consider planting them but was afraid I didn’t have enough space, an assumption which is proving true. There’s definitely a NO VACANCY sign up now and I don’t have to shun plant sellers anymore because even if I had the funds (which I most definitely do not) I couldn’t buy anything because there’s just no room to give it.

The reader also told me about a French website for a character based on a cucumber. Hmmmm. Well, we do have that expression “cool as a cucumber” but I haven’t the faintest idea why.

I’m not. It surely is getting warm here, especially in the late afternoon. The Landlady is pretending to have forgotten what she did with the little fan I had last summer. Maybe she really has forgotten. Oh well, something for the vacancy on that shopping list. Which should by now have a no vacancy sign, too.

Who did it? Who did it? Who sent me this outrageous Christmas card (in May!)? Well, whoever you are, I thank you for the enclosures and the card which will certainly be framed to hang on my wall, although that’s a place I never would have expected to see images of Mrs. Clinton. That poor woman. She’s by no means ugly but does manage to get caught making truly unflattering expressions.

I was wondering. The wife of a president is called the First Lady. What would we call the husband of a female president? The First Gentleman? In Bill’s case, that would be a laugh indeed.

In less weighty matters, one of my favorite toys died. Not the DS, Gott sei dank, but my little Sony radio. This is the second time I’ve owned this particular model and had it die without warning or apparent reason. Still, when you pay less than $20 for an item and it lasts two or three years, really no cause for complaint. When I first bought one it was $12. Now it’s up to $20. This one was actually my fifth. Three were stolen (two by Angelo) and two died.

I decided that since I would be getting my stash of CDs from LF, I might as well get a CD/radio combination. Radio Shack unfortunately no longer has the excellent one they had several years ago and I ended up buying a Coby. Reluctantly. Given the situation in Tibet, I’m not keen on lending even the slightest support to China but it’s increasingly difficult to buy almost anything without the Made in China label. In this case, the CD performs admirably, letting those new headphones really show off their stuff but the radio is lacking. It does well with the more powerful commercial stations but is hopeless with Public Radio, won’t pick up the weaker station at all. So another little Sony radio is on my future shopping list.

And I got another new toy. Helen R kindly gave me an HP digital camera, the first one of those gadgets I’ve ever owned, and I am enjoying it, still getting used to the notion that you can just snap away and easily delete the rejects afterwards. Very much better than taking film in to be processed and finding yourself with a stack of waste paper.

The boys, alas, are very, very camera shy. I’ll have to go easy and gradually accustom them to the idea before I can hope to get any decent photos of either of them. I think if I can get the ten-year-old on his own I’ll have better luck with him, at least.

I ate the first strawberry from my little farm. Yummy. “More, more,” I urged the plant. Looks like it is going to oblige because there are quite a few new blossoms.

“Can you eat it?” asked the Husband. “No, you can’t eat it! It’s just for looking at,” I said. “It” was labeled a “hybrid lily”, a handsome plant with three very large vivid orange blossoms which I couldn’t resist when I saw it at the supermarket. I don’t quite understand the Husband’s being puzzled because most of the specimens in his collection are purely decorative, most not even producing flowers. Perhaps he didn’t expect flowers and vegetables to be in the same garden plot. Well, if he’s expecting to eat peas for dinner from the sweetpeas, he’s in for a disappointment.

Those little things almost perished yesterday in yet another doghouse shift. I wish he’d leave those damned doghouses alone. This time Sparky’s vacant manse was returned to its original spot. I offered several times to help the Husband move it to the back where Sparky is evidently in permanent exile. No joy. So he plunked it back down by Blackie’s house, right on top of the second batch of sweetpeas which had just appeared the day before. At least the first ones survived.

It’s sticky seed pod time and since one of the seeds was stuck to the bottom of my slipper when I got home, I planted it. Came up very quickly, too, and was about three inches tall when it, too, became a casualty of the latest doghouse move. Oh well, there are plenty of substitutes available on almost every sidewalk in town.

I neglected to mention in the last Tale that my breakfast at Kenny’s also included two bottles of Budweiser. But then I guess you took that for granted.

I got it wrong. Helen hasn’t been stimulated yet, just got the standard tax refund. Despite tens of thousands reportedly having received the bonus payments, I still don’t know anyone who has. Certainly not I, alas.

A reader told me that Kenny’s, a restaurant at our little shopping center, serves beer. That they do, and charge handsomely for the privilege, too. I celebrated the day-early arrival of the SocSec deposit by having breakfast there. Two eggs fried sunnyside, bacon and wheat toast. There’s a long counter which faces the open grill section of the kitchen. And there’s a really cute cook who looks like Harold Kama. Not only was he a treat to watch, he fried those eggs to absolute perfection. I’d marry that lad in a flash.

I wish it weren’t quite so expensive because breakfast would definitely become a habit there. I saw Paulo who told me that other habit of mine, the Cove Bar, had reopened in the new Nordstrom wing at the mall. Naturally I went to look for it, without success. After a likewise useless second search, I went to the Customer Service Center to ask about it. No, the lady said, when the Cove Bar closed there had been no mention of reopening anywhere. A pity, but then it’s just as well for my budget that it hasn’t. Gold Gate is really more my speed, and I’ve already been there twice this month. Such an incredibly unlikely venue for me, it really is.

Having a garden definitely changes thinking about the weather. Days of slow, steady rain may be boring as hell for humans but are nonetheless welcome because they’re so good for the plants. And they are all thriving away. My favorite right now is the tiny Bell pepper. I hope it enlarges slowly because at the usual full size it would be as big as the plant itself. I think that plant, along with the strawberries, is trying to produce a harvest a little prematurely.

Meanwhile I water them on the rare days when it hasn’t rained during the night, eliminate the grass which keeps trying to reclaim its former territory and mutter “grow, grow” to them all. That cucumber certainly has gotten the message.

I looked over at the Toothbrusher’s house early on a recent morning, thought “oh my God, they’ve got a sheep!” Well, it’s actually a dog, but it surely looks like a sheep, and one badly in need of shearing. It’s too hot here for all that fur. A handsome critter it is, though, and when there’s no nearer distraction it stares at me every time I go out to sit on the porch.

The Toothbrusher was away for a couple of weeks, greatly missed, returned with a new hairstyle, bleached. He wisely didn’t opt for blonde but a very attractive shade of light brown. It definitely adds to his allure which was already considerable.

But then there’s no shortage of alluring young men in that little valley. I was sitting at the Farrington bus stop when a young man arrived who looked so much like the Sleeptalker. Not only was he physically so similar but his mannerisms and gestures were the same. It was tempting to ask him if he talked in his sleep. There was a song which came out last year: there’s you and me and all other people, and I don’t know why, I can’t keep my eyes off of you. Yep, that was certainly the right soundtrack for the occasion.

Well, the Boss Cucumber is threatening to become the Cucumber That Took Over the Front Garden. That thing seems to be growing about a foot a day.

I do love my garden. Both of them, but the real-life one especially.

I’ve heard that people are being stimulated all over the place (Helen R among them). I’m still waiting, trying not to jump up and down, wave paw in the air and shout “me! me! me!”

Five strawberries, one Bell pepper, three cucumber blossoms. Heigh ho, heigh ho. Natsume has it right in the virtual gardens. Strawberries are the first Spring harvest. The Landlady has never eaten a strawberry. Incredible.

Husband has little tomatoes and okra. Yes, several of his okra plants made it. I would have thought it grew as a dangling pod but nope, it stands straight upright like a green torch. The Landlady was worried that we’re facing a possible surfeit of okra. I assured her it could not be a problem. I love the stuff, always have, and would happily have it with every dinner.

Sweetpeas and catnip are thriving, too, especially since our furry neighbors evidently haven’t yet discovered the latter. And the Boss Cucumber is threatening to take over the place. In just a few days it has shot out a tendril more than two feet long. I didn’t know cucumbers grew as a vine rather than a bush.

It was a pleasant weekend. On Sunday I went with Helen R and LF (my Lawyer Friend) over the mountains to see a production of Somerset Maugham’s The Constant Wife and a handsomely presented bit of fluff it was, too. My favorite line came from the mother, quite a Grand Dame, when she said the true test of love was being willing to share a toothbrush.

That instantly reminded me of the morning when the Sleeptalker shocked me by asking to use my toothbrush. Of course I agreed and was quite touched by it. Guess it must have been love … but then I knew that already.