Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

I had grand plans to do a lot with my day off but then I spent much of it reading a book (I have no memory of how We are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby ended up on my library reading list, but I'm really enjoying it!) and trying not to fall asleep in the armchair.

I did eventually help mother_bones getting the garden ready for winter: we re-potted the grape plant, cut back the dead stuff on the strawberry plants, covered things with straw mulch like tucking them in for the winter. She asked me to get a couple of bags of compost, mindful that the garden center at the end of the road will close for the winter in another week or two, and when I got there Brenda said "we don't have any left! we close next week!" But after a while she seemed to recognize me because she asked if it was for mother_bones, and when I said it was (I'd have said that at first if I'd known it needed to be said!) she said "well she can have a bag." And when Brenda had unearthed her personal stash from all the buckets it was behind and the table it was under in the greenhouse, she determined she had enough to give us two after all. mother_bones was genuinely touched when I recounted all this as I brought the compost home.

We made dinner together too: after the veg box brought us yet more potatoes and reminded me that we have a million potatoes now because I never remember to make them for dinner, we had Sheet Pan Dinner: roasting some of them, halloumi, red spring onion, and rosemary. Along with salad also full of veg box stuff: cos lettuce, mixed leaves, yellow pepper, cherry tomatoes, pomegranate seeds, and a mixture of regular seeds.

The rosemary was brought for our party last weekend, along with some nice gin and tonic. We had more of the nice gin, and nice tonic, this evening; I had for the first time people to share the toast with that I traditionally do for my brother's birthday. He should have been thirty-eight today.