Today was pepper planting day.  Varieties are: Lively Italian (my favorite sweet pepper), King of the North (bell), Jalapeno Black Magic, Paprika, Pimento Sheepnose, Golden Treasure (sweet, Italian style).  I need to get Poblano seeds.  No, I'm not a hot pepper fan!

It has been raining fairly hard, we expect a couple of inches in about 36 hours. Lots of flooding as the ground is already pretty saturated.  Tomorrow the sun is supposed to be out and the temps around 65 warming into the low 70's for the next week or so. That means a lot of little plants are migrating out to the greenhouse.  

Tomorrow's chores: Paint on water seal for the woodshed door and put it together.  It is way past time for that project to be done.  While the wood working stuff is out; build new bench for the greenhouse.  Most of the lumber is ready, it just needs to be put together.  I'm considering making the bench in two sections so the lime tree can shelter in the greenhouse for the winter.  Probably I should just plant the poor lime tree (which is currently completely covered in flowers) outside in the ground. 

Thursday is another trip to SF.  This time for a walk-through with our contractor and some of his subs.  We are hoping to start the project in a couple of weeks, if and only if the planning department, who has FINALLY approved our plans; sends us a bill. Once we get it we can pay it and they can ISSUE said permit. Until that happens we can't start.  They have been faffing around not billing us for 12 days already.  We are trying to be patient, but it has now been a full 3 years since we started this project.  For those who have not been following this thrilling (not) project; we are replacing two enclosed "porches" that are on the back of the Henry St house.  We are not trying to add square footage, we are just trying to replace two leaky porches which are not earthquake safe, in as far as anything can be "earthquake safe". We would just like the porches to have a real foundation, and the back of the house to have a foundation that isn't crumbling. Almost anywhere in the country other than in SF we would walk into planning with our architect and plans, ask for approval and walk out with a permit, or at the very least have it within a week. Not SF. We submitted plans at least a year and a half ago; were told to re-do them; then when we resubmitted with changed plans we were told we could absolutely do what we had originally planned; so we redid the plans again and they were sent back for nonsensical reasons.  Now we finally have approval, but can't get the actual paperwork out of the department.