This past weekend.....

1. We had hoped to go away, but the weather report was unsettled, so we stayed put. The weather was beautiful.

2. We were at home most of Saturday as we were having our yard and garden cleaned and totally deweeded, ivy pulled from over our fences, and all sorts of other stuff in preparation for an outdoor re-do. It actually took 2 full days for a crew to do this and mulch and clean up. They did a terrific job.

3. Saturday night we had a light meal sitting outside at the Tavern on the Lake on Reston's Lake Anne. Very pleasant. Nice food.

4. Then we went to see 'The Marriage of Figaro' at Wolf Trap with friends, and we saw several others at the opera. It was the Wolf Trap Company. The voices were very good, but I felt there lacked the oomph and excitement the opera needed. I thought that might be because of where we were sitting (balcony, center, 9 rows back), or because the orchestra was not quite up to par (tempo was good, but it lacked something), or because the stage was too big for the opera, or the sets too weak. Today's Post review was very positive, agreeing with me that the two female leads, playing Susanna (Maureen McKay) and the Countess (Ailyn Perez) were the best. I thought Perez had the better sound, but McKay's voice was augmented by her superior acting and charisma. But I would not have rated the performance as highly as Stephen Brookes did. Although he agreed with me about the set: "looked like it was banged together from old building scraps, given a fresh coat of dirt, and...littered with department store closeout furniture."

5. Sunday was also pretty quiet. At 4:30 we left for Baltimore, where we took our 80+ year old friends to supper. They keep kosher, but said that they would order fish or vegetarian anywhere. They are getting a little slow, and I wanted to find a place that looked to be elderly-friendly, and I chose (from a drive by only) the Olive Branch, the restaurant of the Ramada Inn on Reisterstown Road, near the Beltway. It is very big, and very crowded (not just overnighters by far), but the menu turned out, for us, to be very limited as most things are served with shrimp. Like the salmon special: "it comes with linguini and shrimp. we can't do it any other way. it's a special". That kind of thing. As to the quality of what we ate. Not too high. I'd give it a C-.