stuff of life

Went for a walk with a friend yesterday, and came home with a bag full of decorative plant cuttings, and a dinner invite for Thursday. So funny!

We stopped at one house to admire some unique flowers in the yard, and the lady came out and started showing us all around her yard and offering us cuttings and plants (and even a small tree...but we would have had to carry it...).

We walked on and there was some property on the other side of the road that looked like it had a fishing pond on it, and some of those are public here, so we walked in to take a look...stood for a while and the people of the house called us up - they were surely wondering why 2 white ladies were trespassing on their private property...anyway, we sat and visited with them (somehow I got stuck talking with the 2 men about foreign relations and politics, which is verrrrrrrrry not me), and by the end of the conversation they had invited us and our families there again for Thursday dinner (my friend is Australian, and they happen to be having guests from Australia Thursday too, so didn't that work out nicely?!) This house apparently is their 'weekend/getaway' house, and they have another one about 2 hours away slap on the beach, in addition to their house in town. Nice.

The kids and I have sort of adopted the 2 rows of beans in the garden next to our house - the garden was planted by the students last semester but has been a bit neglected over the summer. I just couldn't stand to see these beans go to waste, so we have been picking them every few days and sharing them around the campus. Froze and dried some for ourselves too. They call them "long beans" (kacang panjang), and for good reason!

I'm gonna go stamp now!