what do i love????

the grass under the mulberry tree in our front yard was beautiful on our wedding day.....

but after the day it never came back as well....... gio and i decieded - with the idea bursting in my head - to build a sunken patio where the grass once stood.

this sounded beautilul.
i could see it in my head....
i just didn't see where to put all the earth that we were taking out!





it actually only took a few hours over a couple of day.
gio and sam traded helping with me and then we had the last push of all three of us and we were done!

i love sam. i love gio more.

sam has been gone for a few weeks now. i feel lonely on sunday with out him. i aslo feel at a loss for my scarry movie buddy.
i want to go see the omen (please no comments from the peanut gallery) but rebecca v. has been in italy and sam's been at feral fruits........oh where oh where ............

as for what i have been up to!

our first anniversary was june 9th!
gio and i went back to our honeymoon spot in the san luis valley that we love!



we rented a cabin that had a kichenette.
we lounged together, had a beautiful full moon


okay not that one!
this is one of gio's many pondpatrol injuries - he sat on a catus.....



and the last day we spent sometime in the morning going for a walk and shooting pondpatrol episode 40.






we had such a relaxing romatic time together, as you can tell by the lack of pants!
i love valley view!



the garden is coming along. i planted some holly and witches broom infront of the fence under the mulberry. i still desire ferns there as well..... someone i know has a bunch and said they' d donate some to my cause.... very lovelllllyy!!!



the pond has changed shaped, i love it more now as well!



not that you can see it but my dad's bench now sits to the north of the pond and has the best view in the house!



mr.seven
as cute as ever! love him too.



look at my lavenders!!!!!!!!!! love love love!


last year mr.balistreri sold me a merlot and cabernet grape plants. they are getting bigger every day! i am tranning them to go around the post for the sun shade. hopefully in the next few years they'll grow over to the dinning area and shade us during lunch!







i first planned this area to be the herb box but more flowers from last year have popped out. to my surprise the irish bells(the green flowers) are prolific....i am spreading them around the yard in hopes of them semi taking over. i remember they stick around till fall very well!



and here are my first tomatoes of the seaon coming out. and once again the russian heirloom tomates produce the best.

happy birthday to mom and aunt dee dee

time does fly.

today is aunt dee dee and my moms birthday





for sams spring break gio, sam and i went to the black hills of south dakota to hang for a few days..... i know why south dakota? well. we only wanted to travel for six hours - at first we were going to go to santa fe but the town was booked up with spring breaker! and it was still to cold at nite for camping.
we then thought about what is six hour in another direction? the black hills. home of bad dinning and bad thrift stores.
the whole trip was more a pilgrimage for pond patrol than anything (ofcourse a good time for the three of us!)

sam moves away in june so this might be the last trip i take with him!





another ditcher to denver is nick hoppman. i guess he wanted a super fresh start because he asked me to cut his beautiful hair off! i was very reluctant to do what he asked until he told me that he'd asked harlan and zac but they told him to ask me. i felt let off the hook and i can say it slightly proud that no one thought i'd mess it up to much!
ok here it goes.....









oh, and by the way nils cut his all off not to long after nick...something about a hot neck.




the last ubisubi show..... super cool

sven's band - a certain urgency




cory's band - sandusky.
they sound is super cool. they're space cowboy music. (maureen try it you'll like it...it will make you feel good feel good)
live they do alot more than is on the album.......you can download there new album for free at:

http://www.myspace.com/sanduskycomusic









ok, so i got home one day and this is what i saw out of my window.....any guesses? because i don't know..... gio has dub it "dico cowboy"





my friend brendan is an owner in a film company - incite films
he told me about a job in the industry that i didn't know about "craft service". it's no where near glamerous but it pay well for a part time gig. so i've done two commercials for him so far......here's the set of the second commercial day two site two.

mercury in retrograde

all i know is that murcury kick my ass!

starting 3 weeks ago......

thursday:
gio and i went snowboarding and then to indian spring (maybe this is an indian curse?) and we had the best time!!! snow was fluffy and big and the springs were warm and loving......but on the way home (dum dum dummmmmm) the car just stopped working!

we thankfully broke down next to denver west - where there's a wild oats - so we waited three hours for the tow and had a hot soup picnic in car and snuggled in the back for warmth. did i mention it was snowing all day in denver?

we got home chilled but happy.

friday morning:
i went out to see if my car would start and she did! so i thought all was well.......

sunday:
sam and i were going to use my computer to work on his pamphlet.
when i tried to boot her i found out that my imac no longer had any memory that it was a computer....(today found out that the "board" is broken or that the arm for the drive is broken....jury is still out.)

tuesday:
gio and i dropped off the imac with amnesia at the mac outlet (next to mustards last stand on universtiy).
on the way back from taking the computer in the car started acting up.... we found out the next morning that the car was dying and would only cost twenty seven hundered dollars to fix her....snowball, my car, was now dead to me!

wednesday:
i hunted on craigslist for a new car.
we caught a break.
a car cost much less than fixing snowball was spotted by gio (he's so good!).
i ran off to see it and test drive it- it was a gem.
the seller offered to follow me home with it and i offered him a couple hundred less than the asking price. i was happiest of all!

thursday:
mercury struck again.
my beloved driver licsens with the best photo ever fell out of my pocket.

i came home to find that gio has had a terrible tragedy. one of his beloved turtles killed himself.
yes, poor harvey had a habit of turning himself over. he's been found flipped over in the water on the dry ground and this time under his heat lamp.
crys rouse from gio -pleading with harvey "why harvey why!!".
my heart jumped to hear gio's pain........
gio tried to see if harvey was still living at all but all attempts to bring back harvey failed.... and now there are only five turtles remaining.....billbob met an untimely death about a month ago. billbob didn't survive the pond winter hibernation. so both harvey and billbob reside under the fancy pear tree that sam i bought....the memorial tree.....

but health and happiness are still filling us.....but watch out for the monster named mercury in retograde!


"What does Mercury affect?

In general, Mercury rules thinking and perception, processing and disseminating information and all means of communication, commerce and transportation.
(see that transportation!!!)
By extension, Mercury rules people who work in these areas, especially people who work with their minds or their wits: writers and orators, commentators and critics, gossips and spin doctors, tricksters and thieves.

Mercury retrograde gives rise to personal misunderstandings; flawed, disrupted, or delayed communications, negotiations and trade; glitches and breakdowns with phones, computers,
(once agian it was mercury that caused the computers amnesia)
cars, buses, and trains.
(oh, did i mention that the train lines had a coal spill that closed them for two days?)
And all of these problems usually arise because some crucial piece of information, or component, has gone astray, or awry.

It is therefore not wise to make important decisions while Mercury is retrograde, since it is very likely that these decisions will be clouded by misinformation, poor communication and careless thinking. Mercury is all about mental clarity and the power of the mind, so when Mercury is retrograde, these intellectual characteristics tend to be less acute than usual, as the critical faculties are dimmed."

all my love...sorry for the hippy stuff
xxoo
j.le toni

p.s. here's a picture of me and the car

happy birthday to me

how many lives have you used up? or safty belt lesson

i have had a philosophy about back seats of cars and seat belts. i figured if your in the back and get hit your not going out the front window....but i never thought about being upside down in the car.

gio, mj and i headed up to copper yesterday to ride. copper has gotten some ungodly amount of snow in the past two week - something around nine feet? - and we were itching to ride some powder.

the morning started off freezing in denver. my car windows were incases in ice. my favorite ice scrapper (yes favorite) was (and still is) missing so i had to use the crappy one that was left. my window washer fluide pump died on me and i bought a new one but had not replaced it due to the -14deg wheather we've been having.... so ice windows, the cold and all we made it up to morrison parking lot by seven forty am (ten minutes late or so) mj was waiting placidly for us to show.

we headed up to the mountain. we stopped in idaho spings at the sandwich shop - mark was hungery, gio and i were thirsty - the boys got coffee and i got a bottle of juice.

off we went. when we passed frisco last exit we got in to the canyon area. that's when it happened.

mj was driving normaly for the weather conditions.

the back end of the truck (pathfinder) just started to swing out.
then the front started heading towards the median.
mj gently tried to correct this and the truck crossed over to the right lane and then over the hill and the truck flipped.

all of this happened quickly and slowly at the same time.
when the truck rolled gio and mj were in the front seats and i was in the back - with out my seat belt on.

the truck rolled and for a moment i was on all fours on the ceiling and then just a moment later back in the seat on the other side of the truck.

we all remember noise. gio heard the only glass to break - the passenger side mirror. i heard all the cd jewel cases raining down around me, mj heard the top of the trucks luggage rack parts snapping.

then stillness.

the oddest things popped into my head. gio's face was wet and all i could think is that he threw up - but it was mj's coffee split all over the two of them. and then i wanted my juice that i had just purchased; i was quite conserned about it for some unkown reason to me. and then there was the "i wonder what that looked like?" thoughts....

no one saw this happen. no one was next to us on the road. there was a road below us and a man stopped to see if we were ok - we didn't look like a roll over we just looked as if we went off the road. we told him we were fine and decieded to try to drive down to the bottow and drive out.

i got my snow boarding boots on as well as gloves. this took a few minutes. gio and i got out and started pushing.
and then sliently a red suv was flying in the air it's nose backwards from the direction that it was heading. but it was no longer driving it was bouncing down the hill near us! when it stopped gio started towards the driver "baby are you ok?" the female driver was a little out of it as well because she became scared that there was a baby involved some how.

i called to gio to come back and push because my newest concern was that another vehicle was going to come bouncing over the side of the road at us again.

firefighter, ambulances, cops and tow trucks, shovles and -14 deg weather came and went.

no one was hurt. the truck was hardly hurt, mj drove us back to morrison. cocktails at home were in order.

oh, as for the red suv - totaled. the front windshield, front windows and back window were all smashed out. the roof of the truck all smashed in.

someone was looking out for us.

thank you mj for getting us threw that safely.

ps none of us had a camera on us

where in the world is skippy?

a slice of halloween pie

for two weeks in small spurts gio, sam, nils, nick and i made grave stones, ax carring dumby and a few pumpkins. all for giving out candy and scarring the pants off of children.

here's a peek at it.






he looks much scarier in the strobe light with fog!








at one point in the night i looked out in to the neighborhood and saw tons of children swamping the street! i haven't seen that since the good ol' days in virginia!