Delightful evening

Last night, friends Linda and Rodger brought me a ceiling fan for the porch from their store in Granbury. The blades on my old one had drooped so that they looked like a dying flower and wouldn't have moved any air. Rodger brought one that has steel rods in the blades so they won't do that because of humidity--he also scoffed at my remote control, which doesn't work because, as he said, of humidity. The evening began well when he asked, "Where's the ladder?" and I replied, "I don't have a ladder." Rodger: "Linda told me you would have a ladder." Linda: "I should have realized you're not a ladder type of person." We borrowed one from Susan next door, and Rodger spent the better part of two hours on it, coming down occasionally for wine or cheese and crackers. Jacob appointed himself first assist, about which Rodger was good-natured, but clearly Jacob was more of a problem on the ladder than a help. Linda and I sat and visited and drank wine and had a delightful time. Occasionally Jacob would wander off in a foray and in the picture above he's found a spider--he went to examine the coreopsis in bloom and discovered a spider so small that at first Linda and I couldn't see it. But while I was down there looking, I reached to deadhead a bloom and Jacob brushed my hand away, "No, Juju, no!" The spider had a black spot in the middle if its back, and I decreed we wouldn't touch it. After two hours on the ladder, trying to work in the growing dusk, with Linda or Jacob holding a flashlight, Rodger finally said, "Judy, I wouldn't do this for a Republican!" I'm still laughing. He muttered he should charge me $40 labor (which would have been cheap) but I said I was going to fix him a $40 dinner, and he said "You already did that." I had recently served them a veal dinner, which I remember as outstanding though now I'm not sure what recipe I used. Anyway, I have promised to experiment with quail next time, something I've been wanting to do.
All in all, it was a delightful evening for all of us except maybe Rodger. Jacob had arrived in a grumpy mood (fell asleep in the car) and when Linda went to the family room to say hello he ran for me as if to say, "There are strangers in the house!" But in about five minutes they were his favorite people, and he had a great time. I was much impressed when Susan told me this morning that when he walked over with Rodger and Linda to get the ladder, he said, "Hi, Susan. How's your mom?" Her mother has fallen, broken her pevlis, and is in rehab--but who expected Jacob to remember that?
I am so blessed with friends.