Where Has Waldo Been?

At the end of last week we took a little spring break trip to the desert, heading south to Anza Borrego State Park near the Salton Sea. The wildflower show promised to be good after a long rainy season with lots of those lazy (relatively) soaks. Well!! In the first place, I am a desert rat through and through. The Sonoran Desert is my favorite place in the world. I lived for years in the Phoenix area and hung out in the desert as much as I could. And I've never seen such a wildflower display as we saw last week at Anza Borrego. Oddly, even the cacti were nearly in full bloom. (Normally they flower later when it's hotter.) Everywhere you looked, everything was flowers, flowers, flowers. And the weather was quite lovely with a nice breeze that kept everything comfortable.

So now we're home and back to real life. The first day home after any trip is always laundry, laundry, laundry, vacuum, vacuum, vacuum (cat fur). Catch up with email, snail mail, phone calls, errands. I'm determined to get our art hung and placed, and the proper switch and outlet plates installed soon, very soon. So I stocked up on the proper hangers and screws yesterday.

Today we had a bit more fun. After plowing through a pile of itty-bitty to-dos, I went to SLO and found 3 pots for 4 of the cacti and succulents we brought home from a desert nursery in Borrego Springs. Randy wants a desert garden on the south-facing balcony, so it shall be. I can get down with that plan. Then Randy and I met at Luna Rustica to see if there was anything there we couldn't live without since they are having a preferred customer sale. Sure enough. We bought a few Talavera-style switchplates and 2 humungous decorative pots for the arched approach to the front porch.

And, I've started a reading program on which I've long planned to embark. I want to read some challenging stuff before I croak. More on that later. Yes, yes. I know. I'm not exactly cooking right now. Live with it. Tomorrow is our 20th wedding anniversary which we will celebrate with a dinner at Villa Creek in Paso Robles. After that? Back to real life in the food department. Which means back to spreading my culinary wings a little farther than before.