As you know, a xeriscape landscaper’s going to help me turn this yard into an indigenous paradise.  But you know how that goes, you decide to work on one area, then look around the place with a jaundiced eye.  So when I looked at the house critically, I thought the old shack needs a sprucing up, too.

I idly googled stucco, and found a nice-sounding company here in Kelowna.  I contacted the Stucco Surgeon, and even as I type, he and his crew are working away.  The house has ugly white stucco on it from 1960, but by the end of today it’s going to have nice new taupe-coloured stucco on it instead.

And good news about the dog, too.  For only $168 I found out from the vet that she doesn’t have diabetes.  She had some type of mild infection, so was put on antibiotics.  The vet said if the incontinence continues, then the old mutt’s going to have to start taking hormones.  Like owner, like pet, I suppose.

Luke arrived home on Thursday with his pal Nathan.   They were on their way to Vancouver fom Alberta and stopped in for a night of food and hilarity. Then the two of them, plus Luke’s friend Felix, who lives here in Kelowna, headed off to Thailand for a month

Luke’s taking his little tablet with him, and left his phone here.  He said you can call me on this.  I said, on what, your little computer there?  And he said, yeah, let’s try it.  So I dialed the number, his wee, tiny laptop rang, and he said hello into it.  I was quite amazed, as this thing can do almost everything except prepare a meal.

With all of my homemade apricot jam eaten, I’m in a bit of a quandary as I just hate commercially-prepared jams.  I tried one of the Smucker’s strawberry, and it was barely passable.  The one nice thing it did for me was remind me of the old days at the Cavalier Grill in the Georgia Hotel in Vancouver.

My parents liked to stay there, and so we’d eat downstairs in the hotel’s restaurant.  In the mornings at breakfast, they brought that adorable little metal rack filled with the single servings of jam, honey and peanut butter. I loved that so much.

So I’m determined to find an apricot tree to plant in the yard, and then have more apricots and jam than I know what to do with.  But the local nurseries don’t seem to have any tildens, which is the variety I want as it’s one of those where you only need one tree and it’ll bear fruit.

I’ve received a timeline from the xeriscape gardener, and this year’s project should pretty well be wrapped up by the end of April.  What I’m enjoying about this project is I got to pick out an entire new garden full of flowers and shrubs.  It’s garden renovation at its finest.

Then with the house re-stuccoed and the landscape re-done I can return to some of my interior projects.  I want to paint a couple of rooms, and I’ll be sure to choose colours tha are all very zen and Earth-mothery to match the new exterior.  Ohm.