Guess where I am sitting? Yes, in my garden! On the assembled terrace furniture! No, don’t get the wrong idea, I still haven’t received the fasteners. Yesterday, GG and I went to the local Gamma because I decided I was going to buy the missing parts. I needed 45 bolts, 90 washers and 45 nuts. Of course, this is the Netherlands, so you can buy things in modest quantities – 4 per box. If there was ever a moment I was wishing for the bulk volume tendencies of US retail, this was one of them. They didn’t have enough in the size I needed so I had to go with a couple of different kinds. GG told me that I have to realize that in the Netherlands, a hardware store or bouwmarkt (building store), a tuincentrum (garden center) and a furniture store for outdoors are three distinct things usually. I may never take the usefulness of a Home Depot or Lowe’s for granted again 😉

Anyway, three hours of painstaking assembly later and we were able to sit outside with the celebratory beverages.

We sat outside til 1130pm, enjoying the very warm weather and the sense of accomplishment! As you can see, the cats were camped out on the packaging that still needs to leave the garden but I will do that later.

After watching a particularly painful episode of “Call the Midwife”(Season 3, episode 10) and crying, I decided it was time to channel Mom and I started planting all of the hanging flower boxes. Of course, I punched a drainage hole in one of them with too much strength so now I have one empty rack.I was a little more careful with the other seven and in about an hour and a half, I had all of them ready to go. I didn’t set them in the planters to see if I would still like them arranged that way next week 😉 I committed to it and filled them all in. It looks good, a cheery chaos of color combinations. I still have four plants over, which would have been the perfect fit had I not been the Incredible Hulk.

Slowly, it is starting to come together.Next payday, I will go to the tuincentrum and score some more. Assuming, of course, I won’t need to replant the existing ones because everything was eaten by wall climbing brown banana slugs or hungry zombie shelled snails.

I went to brunch with the meetup today which was fun. Lots of new to me people so we had some good conversations. I finally got Suzanne Vega out of my head, mostly by putting the tunes in other people’s!

I didn’t get around to going to the carwash today to get rid of the last of the Angry Birds messaging but since I have about 45 bolts to return to the Gamma tomorrow, I figure I will combine and do it then. I bought 100 bolts in total and they are not cheap – no discount for volume 😉

Busy week ahead. While I was creating yet another Power Point this evening and preparing for a meeting tomorrow, I came across some very good work news. So, that takes a great deal of pressure off of me. Not all of it, but enough to give me some breathing room. You might almost say I am looking forward to going into the office tomorrow 🙂

Henry keeps trying to squeeze between me and the pillows of the terrace furniture. He’s looking at me like “Lady, there are all these pillows but a dachshund needs a blanket, dontcha know?” All the pets are fans of the new furniture, especially when the sun is overhead.  But don’t just take my word for it.

I am enjoying the last of my bottle of Douro. It’s the red wine I got in Lisbon and it is really quite good. I am not normally a red wine drinker but when I tried this one, I knew I needed to bring a bottle home! I also only have one bottle of white left from Italy, which means I need to travel again or do some ordering.

Things are pretty good right now 🙂 I was thinking that last night, that even though Mom isn’t here to run my garden or sit outside on these long summer nights with me, she still is because I wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t been for her inspiration. Someone at the brunch today asked me the story behind my bracelet. For a moment, I thought they meant my shiny green FitBit holder but they meant the bracelet that I never take off, the one that was Oma’s first and then Mom’s and now mine. So, I told the story of how I ended up with this one. The woman who asked me was of a certain age and she told me that such bracelets were very popular for a long time here. She works for the Central Library so she always has such interesting factoids.

I said to GG last night that the danger of having such a great outdoor space now means I might never again leave my house to sit on another terrace. 😉 I think that might be slightly exacgerrated but for the moment it feels that way!