On Tuesday I took her out to dinner for a rather belated first anniversary dinner, since she hadn't felt like going on our actual anniversary. I took her to a Florentine restaurant in a Marriott hotel near my apartment, because she had read about it and thought it sounded interesting and the food sounded like something I'd be able to handle. The food was indeed good. Also, I learned that whenever possible, it's best to find a girlfriend who is absent-minded! This is because when you take her out to dinner and she takes her leftovers home to your apartment and puts them in your refrigerator, she forgets to take them back out again the next morning when she goes to work. Then it's inconveniently far for her to drive back and get them, so you get to eat them yourself! They were delicious. The only bad thing is that when you get to eat them yourself, your absent-minded girlfriend doesn't get to eat them, and if she's a beautiful and unsurpassably sweet absent-minded girlfriend like Susan is, then you really want her to be able to eat them.
Since we're spending this weekend in Yosemite, I'll be going two whole weeks without seeing Susan's home. I'm a bit terrified of what the weeds will do with two whole weeks of not being weeded. But after making that last post about my gardening frustrations, I've been trying to focus on the positive results of my gardening instead. The western redbud tree I bought last spring during our trip to Point Reyes is now at least three times its former height and is obviously very happy in its new home. The deergrass clump has expanded to at least twice its original size in barely a month. The currant that looked half dead when I brought it home has grown new leaves and now looks perfectly healthy. The grapevine looks like it might be growing slightly, too. And last weekend I brought home four packets of non-native seeds to plant in containers on my balcony: rosemary, oregano, lavender, and delphiniums. I'm planning to transplant them to Susan's back yard the weekend after this one, but in the meantime, I wanted to keep them in weed-free containers and coax them to sprout. Well, some of them have! The oregano and lavender have sprouted all over the place, even though the instructions on the seed packets claim that the lavender shouldn't sprout for another week still. I think I may have the very beginnings of a few delphiniums, too. No sign of any rosemary yet, but it's not due for another two weeks.
I should probably be packing whatever I can of my own stuff for Yosemite right now, so I'll go do that.