Libra

October is my favorite month.  And coincidentally it is my birthday month!  I think I've mentioned before on here that Paul and I celebrate birthday months, not just birthdays.  What this basically means is that we do whatever we would normally do in any other month, only we say that we are doing it as part of a month-long birthday celebration.  Case-in-point:  Today we went and bought a lemon tree to plant in the backyard.  Therefore, it is my birthday tree.  Awesome, right?  Go ahead, try celebrating your birthday for an entire month and report back on how much you love it.

We removed a dead lemon tree from this spot a couple weeks ago.  Today I helped Paul dig a hole for our new lemon tree.  It was hard work, but I just imagined myself as Zoolander posing with the pick-axe and went to town on the hard earth. 

Once the hole was deep enough and wide enough, we mixed potting soil with the existing dirt and planted our tree.  We went with a Lisbon lemon tree which is more resistant to extremes in temperatures (unlikely in the Bay Area, but you never know) and is supposed to produce the kind of lemons that you buy in the grocery store.  If you look closely, you will see that our tree actually already has two little lemons on it. 

Once the tree was settled into its new little home beside our fence, we gave it a nice long drink.  Now we have to wait and see whether it will survive.  I don't think there is any reason why it should not thrive, but since neither Paul nor I have done much gardening before we're just hoping that one of us has a green thumb. 

We have lots of fun things planned for the rest of my birthday month, including a trip to Yosemite, a 30th birthday party/open house, a 5k known as a "Warrior Dash" where we will be jumping over burning logs, climbing haybales and cargo nets, and crawling under barbed wire through mud, and culminating in the traditional end-of-birthday-month-costume-and-sugar-fest, known to the rest of the world as Halloween. 

Life is good when you are a libra.