Sticking to routine

It rained Saturday morning in Seattle, but had finished by the time I got up, and it turned into a sunny day, what we've come to think of as warm.

I made pancakes for Lydia. I know Eric had some, too. I don't know who else. Karen's birthday is next week and Nicole wanted to get her some yellow flowering plants, so we made a trip to Go Natives and picked up a golden currant. Their yellow monkey flowers were not quite ready yet. In a couple weeks we may also be able to get balsamroot, a sunflower relative.

We spent quite a while there. Besides Karen's gift, Nicole wanted to get plants for teacher appreciation gifts, and we wanted a few for ourselves, too. They had yerba buena available, finally, and we got some of that for both purposes, plus camas, false lily of the valley, aster, silverweed, and another mock orange.

We didn't plant right away when we got home, though. Nicole took Eric to play with his friend, then took Colin to a birthday party, then went shopping for pots for the gifts. Rachel, Lydia, and I first had lunch, then walked to the Avenue to celebrate Independent Bookstore Day. They each found two books. I got one about Vancouver Island ethnobotany. We also stopped at Blue Highway and Queen Câphê before returning home. Nicole and Colin were back before us.

Next, I planted everything while Nicole took Rachel for some additional shopping in Interbay. Lydia didn't want to go along, so she rode the bike to Coe, instead. I didn't take any photos of my planting this time. The camas is by the pears, the silverweed by the apples, the asters are with the goldenrod, the false lily of the valley with the bleeding heart, and the yerba buena is near the two existing locations. The mock orange is at the back corner of the garage in a sunny spot. I was delighted to discover new growth on one of our deer ferns. I thought all three were dead.

Nicole and Rachel came home with Eric as well. Maybe they had gone to the park to pick him up? I didn't get that story. I raised the seat on his bike and soon Lydia came home and they went off to Coe together. I made dinner. Eric came home with a bloody lip. He had fallen off his bike. He wanted to eat cereal before moving on to ravioli. Lydia walked home with two bikes.

I read after dinner while the kids and Nicole worked on cards for teachers and then moved on to other activities. The French word of the day is sparadrap. Like so often, it was used figuratively, as a paragon of stickiness. Today it seems to refer to a band-aid, but Wikipedia says those were invented in 1920, whereas the dictionary says sparadrap derived from medieval Latin. It does not look like a French word, to me, and I wondered if it was a brand name before looking it up.