A little help from my friends

Summer weekends don't get much better.  I spent Saturday with my foodie friends in the International district downtown.  We lined up with hundreds of other people for a dim sum brunch and went to the fortune cookie factory outlet for a bag of "flat unfortunates" (apparently very fortunate, crushed up for pie crust.)

After that, stuffed with dumplings, we were on to serious Asian condiment browsing at the Viet Wah Asian supermarket.  The next stop was Big John's Pacific Food Importers, a hole in the wall store that many people don't know about, even though they've been selling Mediterranean food since 1971. The very best feta cheese you can buy in Seattle. 

The PFI cheese case

Then on Sunday morning, our friend Candi took the ferry over from Poulsbo and helped me with some rough transplanting. She's the only person I know who "gardens" like me.  This is just a fact and I'm not bragging, because you have to be slightly crazy to work so hard.  Though she be little, she is fierce. In a few minutes, she shoveled and wrenched out a 3-foot plug of Japanese iris that was root-bound for 15 years. Then she said, "Now what? I thought I was over here to WORK today?" And I thought, "Oh, boy." 

It was just what I needed. I've been bogged down and overwhelmed with late summer chores and doldrums. Maybe it was all the canning, or maybe it's just that time of year, still too early for fall cleanup but all those clumps of overgrown, yellowing perennials filled me with ennui. 

Anyway, we soon had enough plant divisions to start a nursery, and I used them to fill in bare spots here and there.  The more good plants, the less space for bad weeds to grow. Candi left with a trunk full of plants to deal with when she got home, but I was sure glad my work was done for the day.

On to the plums.  The chief ladder picker got plenty of advice from his female supervisors on the ground.

We picked this many more, believe it or not. Under cover of dusk last night, I left bags on four unsuspecting neighbor's doorsteps.

So, it was a Sunset Magazine sort of day in Seattle. Though not exactly "local" we had a nice outdoor lunch: Spanish wine, Asian eggplant with Methow Valley honey and imported Greek feta, our own garden tomatoes, basil and mint, and coconut shrimp from? Costco!  The last days of summer are sometimes the sweetest.