So, tonight, I get a bulk email—to my hotmail dropbox—from a sender whose email address I barely recognize.

I have to laugh at this person's gullibility. It was a chain email of the species, "Send this on to fifteen people and you will find the person you're meant to be with!!!!!!!" (Of course, lots of exclamation marks in case you didn't realize how important this was.)

My response: "Well, he's in the living room, reading; shall I go get him for you?"

Silly humans. If they're going to forward me chain email, they should at least forward email that's suited to the subject. I have, after all, been married for nearly three years.

Whoa—brain check there. Yep, three years as of next month. I fear we're sliding past that newlywed stage into old-married-couple stage.

But…now that I think about it, I don't mind. I hated dating with a passion.

Sean, in his gracious kindness, got the first flowerbed in the back yard tilled for us today. It is enormous—more enormous than I'd hoped, but I find that I'm not terribly daunted or terrified by this fact. Instead, I look at the bed and I think, "Ah! Larger than life! I can just plant more of the things I enjoy."

I suppose that's the best way to look at it.Even the large butterfly bushes I bought are dwarfed by the size of the bed.

Jeff took a nap late this afternoon. While he was stretched out on the bed, the cats at his feet, I took the opportunity to tiptoe outside to ponder, undisturbed, on this new flowerbed. After walking outside, I realized I hadn't put on my shoes, so I stopped on the sidewalk and took off my socks and walked barefoot through the grass, newly shorn and still wet from this afternoon's rain.

I stood there, deep in thought, until I heard a tapping on the window from the kitchen. Jeff waved hello and left me to continue contemplating.

After working outside, the dragons of web design have reared their head again. The dilemma: what to do about standards?

I've gone back and forth about the dichotomy between web standards and aesthetic design so many times that I'm loath to write of it all again. Yet I find myself coming back to it, because there are some aesthetic problems with this site due to my determination to stay standards-compliant.

Yes, once again, it's time for referral madness…time to take a deep look at the dregs of the web stats to find out just how you sick pervs are finding domesticat.net.

Winners for the month of May are:

There's almost nothing better than a 50%-off sale at your favorite nursery—almost nothing except, perhaps, the look of plants acquired for a song sitting prettily in your flowerbeds.

We went back to Exotic Harvest again today, Kat and Sean and I, and we came away with more lovely haul. My front porch is currently so full of plants that I really don't have room for any more. I need to get the ones currently in pots transplanted to the back flowerbeds as soon as they're ready.Sean was kind enough to plant the gardenias for me; the front of the house looks much less bare now that the right side of the house is bracketed with tall gardenias in full bloom. The area of the front porch that, until this afternoon, held gardenias is now taken up by two enormous purple-blooming butterfly bushes. They'll help anchor the back beds, provide some height, and the blooms will match my purple irises.

Not much in the way of cohesive news to report. Sean and I went to my favorite local nursery today, because they were having a sale. Today, things were 40% off—tomorrow, they'll be 50% off. I made off with two enormous gardenias—each between three and four feet tall. They bloom white, and are in the middle of blooming right now.

Tomorrow morning, they will join the ranks of the other plants, large and small, in my front flowerbeds. Slowly but surely, the beds are taking shape.We're going back tomorrow to snoop around some more. With the sale, the herbs will be $1 per pot, and that's pretty hard to pass up. I know that I will probably pick up some more chives, and will probably get some more of the mint plants, but I don't know what else.