Now I used to have some of these as houseplants but trust me–mine never grew this big even with a dose of Miracle Gro!!! This vine is all the way up the tree in the front of the house and the leaves are even bigger up towards the top where I can not reach them! Crazy!!! Needless to say things are pretty lush around here right now even though it is not the wet season. Chris and I are sitting on the veranda and he is disgusted that once again he has bushes to trim back…..we thought we had left those behind in North Carolina when we sold that house with the horrendous hollies all around but as we are looking out we see that the hedges have grown considerably in the 4 weeks we have been in the house……oh well. At least there aren’t that many and they seem semi easy to trim.

We have had a leisurely day today—I woke up coughing my fool head off from this silly allergy thing I have going and just got up and made a pot of tea early and stayed up. We headed out to the mall so Chris could get a haircut, went to the luggage place and found a purse for me (Chris just does not understand that having only 2 purses is putting me in a bind!) and a great backpack for Chris for traveling. If they would have had 2 I would have gotten one too as it is the perfect answer for our plane trips—-room for laptop, power supplies and cords and enough pockets to cram everything else in that you want to take on the plane with you. Hopefully they will get another one it.

We had a quick bit at the Coffee Club where they DO know how to make a decent mocha—they even put marshamallows in it if you want!! Yum! Then off to Woolworths to do the grocery shopping which always seems to take longer and cost more than I think it should but oh well. We are still in the stocking the pantry and freezer stage and since I have no wheels during the week to go shopping I try to plan things out and shop ahead. Chris is finally getting to ordering his car—a Prado which is similar to the Highlander I think. I may have gotten that wrong. We are still trying to decide what to do for me—don’t really need a car all that much right now and when he is in Townsville I can have it if I drive him in so I just can’t really see getting anything quite yet till things settle out a bit and we know more about what I would actually use. We are trying to be frugal at this point I guess and why spend money we don’t need to??? And I am fine—if I need the car sometime we can work it out but for right now I am not really concerned about it. My feet can take me where I need to go!!

We have been watching with interest Hurricane Ike and figure by the time we get up tomorrow morning Texas will have been hit pretty hard –at least parts of it. Hopefully people have been able to evacuate and take measures ahead of time so that it won’t be a repeat of Katrina in the way that things were handled. Hope you all are safe and dry!!!