may only exist on the wallpaper in this house.      But we're giving the bijou courtyard a damn good shot.  Thanks to my clever friend Fiona I have a lovely planting plan to work from.  After a good chat with Jose, the landscape guy, I changed a couple of things - Portuguese Laurel doesn't like our coastal air, so we're going to use a vine he likes for our hedging, for example. Jose was worried that the Amelanchier tree we were going to use might not grow in Zone 10,  so we're going for a Palo Verde which has the benefit of being native, albeit not half as pretty as an Amelanchier. But for the most part the plans are unchanged and the plant list is good to go. Concrete is poured and tile has been laid. It took some magic (various extra drains and little hidden supporting beams) courtesy of Ramos Masonry to make the tiles line up and be on the same grade as the kitchen floor. Totally worth the extra effort, because when these sliders are open it's going to feel as

 Our sense of the passing of time is completely warped by these last few weeks. The paint we thought would take three or four weeks has now been going on for almost three months. We're on Week #11 and there's now a little light at the end of the tunnel, but my goodness it's been a long tunnel. So much prepping, priming, touching up, and in all the rooms on almost all the surfaces. Now I see the process, I suppose it was naive to think it would only take three weeks. I thought that's what the painter told me, but I wonder if I dreamt that, or misheard. Or he was kidding? Anyway, 13 weeks seems much more realistic than 3. Paint holds up a lot of things. They can't fit light fittings, or instal hardware like taps and towel bars, or put up wallpaper, or add cabinet doors till it's done. But now, room by room, as the paint gets finished up, those other things are getting done. And by contrast they seem to work at warp speed. In the last week our bedroom, the bathroom