bloody cravings

it is a lovely, breezy, cool & overcast day at the edge of the blue ridge mountains.

this morning i'm finding some great botanical resources in and around charlottesville. first of all there is sacred plant traditions, an herbal medicine school. then there is virginia plant savers, an organization committed to protecting native medicinal plants and their habitats. there is also the virginia native plant society. their website has some great pdfs on growing butterfly gardens, native hedgerows, woodland wildflowers, and the like. and then there is garden medicinals and culinaries, a fantastic online resource for seeds, plants, supplies and books. let's hear it for medicinal plants and native preservation!

on other fronts, yesterday was our 6th wedding anniversary. because we're broke and babysitter-less, we didn't do anything out of the ordinary. we did have lunch at and indian buffet and, in the evening, we went for a long walk while tashi rode her bike alongside us. the lunch was mediocre; it made me miss the delightful indian restaurants in ann arbor. it just didn't compare to raja rani, or madras masala, or shalimar, or my very favorite, the take out counter at foods of india, a grocery store at the bottom of the broadway hill. it appears that there are only two indian restaurants in all of charlottesville, and zero grocers. there are virtually no middle eastern eateries or grocers. oh the difficulties.

dan and i also managed to make some progress in setting up our bedroom. it and our offices have been the last hold-outs of chaos. the dresser is now in the right place and we can begin to sort out the placement of our clothes. even though we have two walk in closets, they both have very short bars for hanging clothes, and one of them is a storage place for our landlord's random shit. it is too bad because it is a closet as big as a room and would make a great chill zone or meditation chamber.

tonight i'm going to make stuffed zucchini for dinner, cypriot style.

just for the record, my craving for the perfect southern bloody mary has not yet been satiated. life has never been the same since that fateful day i had a bloody mary from lafitte's blacksmith shop in new orleans. if anyone knows where to find the tastiest bloody mary in charlottesville, do please let me know.