A Girl...

You Grow Girl

Yesterday afternoon we were out cutting asparagus for dinner and building a new bed for Simon's sunflowers when the neighbor two houses down introduced herself for the first time. She and Simon exchanged names and pleasantries (while I hid in the potting shed; it was 5 p.m. and I was in my p.j.s) and then he asked if she'd like some lemons from our tree. Ten minutes later she was standing in our side yard, passing to us over the fence what she called a "sadly belated" housewarming gift--a massive slab of fresh tuna that her husband had caught on a weekend fishing trip. She reassured us that it was sushi grade on the off chance we were into that sort of thing. Um, did we accidentally move into a suburb of Paradise?

The day before, while manicuring the jungle that was the front yard, we offered lemons to our across-the-street neighbors, the ones who'd brought us homemade muffins and heady coffeebeans the week we moved in. Simon filled up his floppy hat with fruit and ran it across the street, and they said they'd be back over in half and hour with a glass of lemonade for him (it was 4 p.m. and, yup...).

So wait, we give you lemons from our garden and then you make them into lemonade, which you give right back to us? Well, sure, if you insist.

They didn't actually come back with a glass of lemonade, though. They came back with an entire pitcher of iced tea lemonade (holy yum, especially with fresh mint), and then sat with us on the patio for an hour and told us stories about our house and made us even that much gladder to have landed here, in this house, in this place, at this time, and with these people.

[I can't even begin to tell you about the neighbor to our left who, each evening when we go out to water the garden, clambers down his back steps as fast as his octegenarian legs can muster so he can tell us stories about his days as an Airborne Ranger in Korea, about walking to school hip-deep in Ohio snowfall, about his favorite jazz albums, old school all the way. He does this while playing it off like he just happened to pop out for a breath of fresh air at the very moment we did. Not that he wants to talk to us (for hours on end), but that we just happened to be out at the same time and he started conversation to be polite, see. Simon and I now have a distress call to signal when we're caught in his trap with no hope for escape; His stories (and tall tales) are awesome, but sometimes all we want to do is go pick a tomato real quick-like and head back inside to make dinner.]

While lounging on the deck with our first official overnight houseguests this Sunday, Simon pointed out that although we (he and I) share the same social life right now, it's at different ends of the spectrum from our separate social lives historical: for the last few years, he's the least social he's ever been whereas I'm almost constantly overwhelmed with the stream of places to go and people to see (and sometimes dreaded smalltalk to make). Friday night we went to a big birthday party for my coworker-turned-concertbuddy friend, Gayle; on Saturday morning we went to a company picnic at the racetrack; on Saturday night, Emily and Dan joined us for a marathon sushi-making session (tastes just as good at midnight!) and sleepover; and then it was lemonade and fish gifts and hot jazz saxophonists coming at us from all sides. All the way down to the whole inappropriate pajama-wearing thing, I have to say this life is really growing on me.

Photos to come.