There are singularly few pests or blights in the garden itself.  Bermuda or devil grass is one of our Western specialties, though it may have invaded the East, too, since we left.  It is an unusually husky plant, rooting itself afresh at every joint with new vigor, and quite choking out the aristocratic blue grass with which we started our lawn.  At first you don’t notice it as it sneaks along the ground, some time above and some time below, as it feels disposed, and then suddenly you see it’s cobwebby outlines as plainly as the concealed animals in a newspaper puzzle.  If you begin to pull it out you can’t stop.  It reminds me of the German system of espionage, and that adds zest to my weeding.  The other day I laboriously uprooted an intricate network of tentacles, all leading to one big root, which I am sure must have been Wilhelmstrasse itself.  Being able to do so little to help win the war, this is a valuable imaginative outlet to me!

Everything about the place, as well as the lawn, seems to get out of order when we have tenants.  No one likes tenants any more than we like “Central.”  There is a prejudice against them.  They do the things they ought not to do and leave undone the things they ought to do, and there is no health in them.  I have more often been one than had one, and I hate to think of the language that was probably used about us, though we meant well.

I am not going to tell all I know about tenants after all.  I have changed my mind.  I am also going to draw a veil over the adobe road during the rains, because we really do like to rent the place to help pay for the children’s and the motor’s shoes, and it wouldn’t be good business.

The village delivery system enrages and entertains me by turns.  I was frankly told by the leading grocery store that they did not expect to deliver to people who had their own motors, and when I occasionally insist on a few necessities being sent up to my house, they arrive after dark conveyed by an ancient horse, as the grocery manager is conservative.  A horse doesn’t get a puncture or break a vital part often (if he does, you bury him and get another) and it is about a toss-up between hay and gasoline.

Every now and then I am marooned on my hill, if the motor is “hors de combat,” and then I get my neighbour to let me join her in her morning marketing trip, sometimes with disastrous results.  One day the boys and I sat down to dinner with fine sea-air appetites, to be confronted by a small, crushed-looking fish.  I sent out to ask the cook for more.  She said there was no more, and as no miracle was wrought in our behalf, we filled up the void with mashed potatoes as best we could.  Just as the plates were being removed the telephone rang, and my neighbor’s agitated voice asked if I had her cat’s dinner!  Light flooded in on my understanding.  We had just eaten her cat’s dinner.  She went on to say that the fish-man had picked out a little barracuda (our household fish in California)