Bonanza!

My happy cup overfloweth.  Any visit from my Kids is a Red Letter event, and two visits in as many weeks sends me over the moon.  Deb and Craig came up yesterday!  As if that weren't gift enough, they drove up and unloaded two big, healthy peony plants loaded with buds.  Not only that, the two worker bees planted them in what used to be the herb garden.  I didn't have to lift a finger.  I'm officially changing the name of that plot to The Peony Garden.  After the growing season, peonies die off and disappear, but pop up again in spring.  I've been watching the plants they'd previously given emerge one at a time.  It will be a virtual forest of peonies and I can't wait for them all to bloom.  The Kids also gifted me with a Thai basil plant.  Since I don't trust the squirrels, I will not plant it in what used to be the herb garden, but in a pot on the deck.  The ground squirrels are out in full force now, racing around in the front yard, playing tag, sounding off with that irritating chirp, and the brazen little devils are coming right up to the screen door on the porch to torment Ralph and Celeste.  I'll be darned if I'm going to spice up their salads with basil, too. 

And then...and then Deb and Craig brought out a bucket of KFC!  How's that for the frosting on the cake?  We did not, however, have cake.  I finally paid off my debt to Craig and had made a pecan pie when I found out they were coming up.  (My boy is a sucker for pecan pie.)

Craig knows someone who may be interested in the old tractor and all the implements that have been sitting in the field.  I would be so happy to know it/they were fulfilling destiny and not sitting like yard art, sadly unused all these years.  Fingers crossed.  We went out to take some photos, and then did a walkabout in the yards, stopping to chat with the goats, who are always curious about guests.

It's going to get hot soon and I know that will curtail any visits from the valley Kids.  "Oh, let's go visit Mom in the sweat box!"  Not!  (They all have A/C.  I don't.)  The weather was perfect yesterday, and seeing Deb and Craig was perfect, too.