Yummy Salad

I had the best salad ever, with lettuce and a little bit of fresh basil from my pots on the deck.  Delicious.

It's not crispy lettuce like Romaine or Iceberg, but very flavorful and the basil added just the right spark.  I added chicken salad, some olives, peas, and lemon pepper seasoning.  Yum.

I could have added chives.  They are in bloom in a little pot among the rocks in the gravel.

The big alliums are in bloom.

This view reminds me how limp and awful the sweetbay magnolia looks in spring.  It keeps its leaves over winter, and the waxy evergreen foliage looks ok through the cold weather.  But then, just as everything else is perking up, it gets droopy and sparse looking.

I always think it is declining, and won't make it, but it is just shedding the old persistent leaves and getting ready to put out new ones.  It always looks wonderful and full later in spring, but in early May it looks terrible.

PS - isn't the light awful?  So many days of rain and gloom and overcast.  I adjusted these photos in Aperture, and still can't get the coloring to look decent.