lunch and tea with friends and the full moon

my herbs aren't really flourishing as their containers are a bit small . . pretty plant pots are nice to look at but don't always make the best homes. the mint on the right is probably doing the best. the rosemary in the middle seems to have stabilized and the thyme on the left is slowly dying; sadly. the two aloe plants on the left are fine . . and the larger one has another baby, i think. it must be a great, great, great, great grandchild from the one i bought many years ago in florida when visiting greg's family with the girls when they were little. i remember clearly that it was at a local health food store whose plants were arranged artistically around it's outside patio.

chanda stopped by after a counter culture workshop. her work uses counter culture coffee and they allow baristas from local cafes to learn more techniques at their training centers. i actually didn't ask her what she worked on today . . i guess we were busy talking of other things. (what techniques could there be? different lattes and cappuccinos?)

we each made our own sandwiches.

i met sacha and reina in the late afternoon at maman cafe . . but after they closed we shifted to the amorino gelato cafe where we sat and finished our coffee drinks (i had an iced peach mango green tea!).

the talk centered around college tours (oberlin a week ago and boston in two weeks for reina's son) and travels (sacha was just in switzerland) and higher realms - our human potential for spiritual knowledge.

reina walked with me cross town to the taco place where i picked up dinner for greg and i this evening . . unfortunately, their guacamole tonight was very poor. they usually water it down but tonight it was more watered down than usual and it looked like they had used a bad avocado. we're not feeling so inclined to patronize them any time soon again.

here's a photo of tonight's full moon (acutally i think it might not be completely full until 1:36 am tomorrow). i just read that it was a perigee moon (when it's path is closest to earth) on august 10th . . so yesterday's photo was the supermoon. earthsky writes that this bright moon falls in the middle of the perseid meteor shower . . so it'll be difficult to see those beautiful shooting stars. i saw a shooting star during the perseid shower in 2016 when out on the cape. it was very exciting and i wrote about it here.

(earthsky gives some tips here on how to still view the perseids with a full moon.)

the perseid meteor shower

greg and i were up early to catch some shooting stars. it was the first time i was able to see the perseid shower and it was incredibly bright and clear. so beautiful. i especially saw one very clear shooting star! m and c saw them last night while at a drive-in movie with their cousin, and my nephew has been seeing them all week late at night. i'm hoping we can still see them tonight.