Time warp

All right, I'm stumped.

On book-sale day at the library, El Burrito and I can be at the library by noon, stop for a romp at Shelter Garden on the way home, and be home before 1:30. On Storytime day, we're at the library at 10:30, romp in the Garden, possibly stop at one store on the way home, and can't seem to get in the door before 1:45 at the earliest. Even accounting for an hour of errands and shopping, we're losing time somewhere.

At any rate, we're going to the Garden at least twice a week lately. It's about the best place I've found so far to let El B run around and have some fun, and we're quickly running out of decent weather for the year. I'm not sure what we'll do when it gets cold and nasty in six weeks or so. They close the Garden when there's snow, but other than that, I guess we'll just bundle up and go romp anyway. Now, if I can just get him to stop chasing the squirrels before he finds one that chases him. It could happen - there are twits who like to feed the squirrels out of their hands, and a few of the critters are getting a little bold. It's only a matter of time before they get pushy and obnoxious.

(Two of DH's co-workers were walking one day; one of them was 9 months pregnant and was trying to hand-feed a squirrel. The other co-worker had to tell her that maybe it wasn't such a good idea. And last week, I saw a woman prompting her kid, maybe 7 years old, to do the same thing. Twits! They can crack a walnut with those teeth, a little skin won't stop them if they get grabby or can't tell food from a finger.)

The Garden isn't as interesting this time of year. The waterfall is shut off, the ponds are drained, the koi are vacationing somewhere indoors, and all the annuals are gone. Empty flowerbeds aren't that picturesque. Even some of the perennials go inside for the winter - they've got some pretty large banana plants and elephant ears. I imagine they'll be cutting the roses back soon; they pruned some of them already this week, and cut down a mostly-dead Japanese maple that I thought would be on the short list. Their Japanese maples got smacked around hard by the ice storms and weird freezes last winter, poor things.