Moose and Squirrel

Alex sent me this photo of Joma and Kermit with the title "Moose and Squirrel."

Puppies

Just in case anyone was wondering how Kermit is fitting into the household...

Joma is four years old. Kermit is 10 months old. And while we still make sure that Joma is safely out of harm's way when Kermit gets silly-puppy-gallops, he's as gentle as a stuffed toy with her. She does get frustrated when he gets in between her and where she wants to be, mostly because there is no way she can shove him hard enough to make him move.

Joma's shirt? She adores playing "soccer" with kids her age. As you can imagine, it mostly involves kicking a ball and screaming while racing around madly.

Natural Bridges State Park -- and Monarch Butterflies!

"Want to make a day trip with us?" I asked our grand-daughter Lillian. "I promise not to nearly die."

With no ill will towards me after my debilitating encounter with noxious chemicals on our previous road trip, Lil enthusiastically agreed to make it a day of wonder and go to Santa Cruz, to Natural Bridges State Park for a visit with hundreds upon hundreds of monarch butterflies.

There are a few spots on the West Coast where the butterflies congregate, and a big colony in Mexico. These are the fourth generation of the year, and they live six to eight months -- enough time to travel to the communal hibernation grounds, winter over, and then head out in the spring to produce Generation One. One, Two, and Three spread east and north, mating and laying eggs on milkweed plants, living only about two to six weeks. Then back Generation Four comes.

We got to Natural Bridges at a perfect time of the morning on a perfect day. Usually when we've gone to Santa Cruz, it's fogged in and chilly. This day was clear and warm, and at 10 am, the butterflies in the eucalyptus grove were just being touched by the sunlight, making them flutter and then take off looking for breakfast.

Some of the butterflies at the top of the trees got warmed up enough to take off, but in the chill morning air, fell out of the sky. This one on the right landed on the observation deck and sat there in a chilly stupor until the ambient air temperature rose.

It was astounding to be able to get practically nose to nose with the beautiful creature; when can you get close to a butterfly in your garden? Not very often -- I've tried.

The observation deck is at the bottom of a gully, with ramps leading down to it from the parking lot and park offices. The gully has a grove of eucalyptus trees and thick vining vegetation on all of its sides. Visitors standing or sitting on the observation deck were quiet, in awe, looking up at the clusters of monarch clinging to the branches, the warmer ones sailing about in every square yard above.  There was a sense of holiness to the place, a sense of being part of something so large and mysterious that there were no ready words to describe it, as though even trying to put a description to the heart's feeling would be wrong.

They're hard to get on camera up there in the trees, though, especially if you've got a relatively feeble camera. A LOT of the visitors I saw had lenses on their cameras nearly as huge as the ones you see on the sidelines at NFL football games, the lucky hounds. (I would envy them, but I doubt that I have the arm strength to hold anything that size steady.)

This cluster was just starting to have the sun illuminate it, and so the monarchs on the sun side (to the left) were beginning to spread their wings to the heat.

Bernie and I have been to Santa Cruz to visit with the monarchs quite a few times in the past; often enough to shout at the butterflies headed west across our property, "See you in November!" I don't know if Lil was impressed enough to want to do it again next year or not. She seemed to really enjoy the trip, but the sun was so scrumptious that she wished she had been prepared to wade in the ocean, prompting her to rant about preparedness for adventure.

 What's so amazing is the number of butterflies. The photo to the right looks like a tree with dead leaves thickening it. But they aren't leaves, you're just seeing the underside of the wings of thousands of monarchs. Down in the gully, there's not enough light to see the color, and by the time the sun brightens up that brilliant orange, the monarchs are ready to flutter away.

Sadly, there's a big decline in monarch populations, largely due to farmers' indiscriminate use of herbicides. Milkweed, which is the food for monarch caterpillars, is a weed. It grew in the fields and forests of Pennsylvania, where I grew up. (Which had to be one looooong trip for the poor monarchs headed back to Mexico in the fall.) But it's also due to people with good intentions planting prettily-colored tropical milkweed, which harbors a caterpillar parasite that damages the insect. (Back-east milkweed was just green, with insignificant whitish flowers.)

 But back to the visit. The sun rose, and the lovely lady spread her wings. "Recharging her solar power panels," a ranger told us. And indeed, she turned from facing into the sun to present her back and wings to the most light.

We know she's a lady monarch because the dark lines on her lower wings are thicker, and contain no black dots. Boys have dots, girls don't.

When we had hogged all the time we could on the observation platform, we saw a herd of kindergarten children swarming with their teachers, on a field trip to introduce the little Santa Cruzians to their winter neighbors. It was time to take a gentle hike down the trails to the beach. ...And then backtrack, because recent rains had flooded the end of the trail. We made our way through the park to the sun-warmed rocks by the ocean, and spent another hour or so watching the waves and the seabirds. By then, it was lunchtime, and we had plans.

After a ten year absence, we were headed back to The Crow's Nest, a restaurant on Santa Cruz Harbor. We loved it ten years ago (has it really been that long since we were there?) and it did not disappoint us at all. The menu is a little different, but the interior was impeccable, the wine list lovely, and the food was good. I think if we mention that we'd be doing dinner there again, Lil would jump into the car and wait for us.

One last thing, let's be equal opportunity photographers, and get a boy monarch into the picture, with his dotted lower wings:

See? A tiny black dot on his much thinner black stripes. A fashion statement from the insect world.

Ocean in the Sky

With the smoke from wildfires lingering in the sky, the dust from the almond orchards clogging sinuses and filters, we don't spend a lot of time outside lately. But in the evening, as the season changes and southern winds bring clouds, we call to each other and run outside to watch the sunset glow and slowly fade.

The other evening the sky was especially lovely, but if you turned your head upside-down, the air was transformed into an ocean. "Oh my gosh, it does look like water!" Lillian exclaimed, laughing. Joma also looked upside-down, but not at the sky. For her, it was enough to see us laugh at her. After all, isn't she more important than the sky?

Cars passed us by on the street; but in both directions, not another soul was outside gazing at that celestial glory. I feel a pang of sorrow noting that, and hope that Lil and Joma will remember to look up and out as they grow to adulthood.

The photo was turned upside down in Photoshop.

Ketchup

This is the best Moon picture I've ever taken with my Sony camera. I used the action setting and it came out pretty good. We've been sitting outside in the evenings, in the shade of the eucalyptus tree, watching ants move their colonies into my raised vegetable beds. Like geese flying south, or dogs shedding their summer undercoats, ants moving eggs is a sure sign that autumn is nearby.

This evening sitting time cuts into blogging time, and as a result, I haven't had many entries over the past couple months. I'll make up for that with some mightily-compressed paragraphs, bringing readers and myself up to date.

We rented a truck and bought a cord of almond wood. The suspension on the Chevy Prism (2000, and 281,000 miles) is really getting rough, and without an income, replacing the Vibe (2003) isn't an option, so we opted out of ferrying the wood in the cars' trunks and spent a few Andy Jacksons and got the wood. It's stacked now, after one of the most pleasant stacking experiences I've ever had; the weather in the mornings has been wonderfully cool (it was only over 100 degrees when we picked up the wood) and I could take as much time as I needed to bring it in and find niches for each piece. I swear every other year we got wood coincided with a hellish heat wave. Also, possibly because Dink is off pasture and in a paddock, I may have better upper-body condition from shoveling horseshit cleaning up after him.

Ah, Dink. The old man is in fine fettle at 23 years of age, still good under saddle so that I can ride him out alone if need be. He's feeling quite feisty for his years, and I've had to really ride like I know what I'm doing as he prances and postures, like liquid, like wind-blown clouds, surging forward, lofting side to side, as we prepare to ride out into the orchards. I rode today, too; although he was an asshole prior to the ride, he was perfect on it. Good horse.

Joan (also called JoMa) is in a phase of vocabulary-building known as the Screaming Meemies. Can't figure out what she wants? She will pierce your eardrums for you until you do with a scream that is incredibly high-pitched and pure mind-blasting sound. I can't wait for her to grow through this one. She's also taking a few steps, but can still travel faster quadrupedally.

Lillian started school at the Historic Durham Ferry campus of Venture Academy. Already we can see a difference in her homework assignments: she's expected to learn practical English and math! After six years of schlock and stupidity, (no wait, her fourth-grade teacher was really good) it looks like she will finally learn something that might actually stand her in good stead.

Bernie has expanded his culinary skills to include tempura and a kickass key lime pie.

I tackled a new cooking skill, too. Mine had to do with buying whole squid, and learning to clean and cut them up. But that's a whole blog post of its own, and I hope you'll check back for "Dancing with the Squid" in days to come.

Ten Reasons to Be Thankful Even if I Was Worried about the End of the World

1. California Decembers are still clement enough for geraniums to bloom. Red and green at Christmastime are apropos.

2. Even if the Fiscal Cliff thing were to come to pass, our lifestyle has put us outside the grid. We'd have little impact on our way of life, if any.

3. Our two favorite supermarkets have begun carrying potato chips cooked in olive oil -- this means I can eat them. (I can't eat the ones cooked in sunflower or canola oil, as they make me unpleasantly ill. ) Merry Christmas or Armageddon, I have had potato chips to snack on in the evening!

4. The longest night of the year will shortly be a thing of the past until a year from now. (Daylight Savings Time should be adopted year round. Night-time at 5pm is just stupid.)

5. In seven weeks, I'll be buying tomato plants for the garden. (God willing and the creek don't rise.)

6. My 6-month-old grand-daughter smiles broadly when she sees me, and she just cut her first tooth.

7. My 10-year-old grand-daughter is creative, well-spoken, and a welcome guest in other people's houses. And respectful, and loving.

8. We're getting lots of glorious rain this winter so far. Everything feels damp, but I can live with that. Fill those reservoirs! Max that Sierra snow-pack!

9. Our household is stable, and at peace with one another. Three generations living together can't always say that, but we can. We're a team, and it makes us strong.

10. The "Perfect Ten" is my marriage to Bernie. We've just celebrated 38 years since he asked me to marry him. I still remember how the world changed that day, and how I knew that I would never again feel alone, that I would always have him at my side, that we could conquer anything that life threw at us.

It was a kind of innocent assumption ... we never know how long we'll have with anyone, not really. But on the other hand, for 38 years, we were right.

Happy End of the Mayan Calendar!

The Morning of the Day She Did It

Last Friday, while I sat in the garage studio with the door open, letting the amazingly cool air into the house, I watched Lillian play on the sidewalks.

It was significant: the day before, while I was out at the reservoir riding the horse, Lil took her bike out ... and began to ride it.

She had a teeny bike years ago, tried it, didn't figure out the dynamic, ignored it. Then this bike, a couple years ago, same thing.

I'm not sure what made her leap out in intuition, but she got her bike out and declared she would learn to ride it. And she did.

On Friday morning, she was wheeling it like a scooter up and down the sidewalk, when suddenly I heard her call, "Hah! Gran, I'm riding my bicycle." And so she was.

A bit later, the little girl from next door popped over, and I heard these beautiful words from Lil: "You want to ride bikes together?"

In the course of their morning zooming, they visited a yard sale down the street. Lil, in red, assists Kendra in securing a purchased plush pig to her handlebars.

Bernie thinks that me helping Lil learn to ride Dink made a difference. I think so; riding without stirrups probably helped her gain that sense of balance she needed. And now, riding the bike will help her learn how to adjust for speed when the horse trots.

Truly amazing, truly wonderful.

Winter Day

Yet ANOTHER day in the 60+ degree range! We went to the hardware store today, and found that they were out of onion sets already -- this crazy warm weather has everyone jumping the gun.

I did have to go up to Manteca for a couple things, so we stopped in The Home Depot and picked up onion sets (they had plenty) and seed potatoes as well. In about two weeks, I'll be ready to plant, I think.

Coffee cans are sitting in the garage, waiting for me to plant Marglobe tomato seeds in them; I'll buy Bernie's Romas and maybe an Early Girl at the hardware. I've got a month and a half before I need to worry about tomatoes, though obviously, I've got them on my mind.

It's nearly time to close up the garage and chase the granddaughter indoors. I smell some fool's fireplace burning even though it's a "No Burn" day. With the warm afternoon, even with the sun going down, the neighborhood boys are playing football across various front yards, and Lil and a couple girls are playing their incomprehensible princess or wizard games. Howie is ready to go indoors where he has a slim chance of someone giving him a tidbit as supper is cooked in the kitchen.

Like the kids, I'm reluctant to admit that a winter evening is calling an end to activities in the open air.

Little Things

Just for the record, the folks at Google have new and improved Blogger past my comfort zone. I'm just a blogger, no big deal -- but I shouldn't have to go into and edit HTML every fucking time I save a blog draft.


At this time, I cannot make the photo appear at the upper left corner of the blog. That's just ridiculous, because I've done so for just about every picture that has ever appeared in this blog.

Ah, there, I did it, but only by adding a space after I'd typed a few paragraphs. It shouldn't have to be that difficult.

The picture is of a weed called "speedwell." Its blue and white flowers are no more than 3/8 of an inch across. Prolific and widespread, it can make a lovely little free-hanging plant in a planter, or it can take over your garden in a matter of days. I love it, and I also mercilessly remove it from the vegetable plantings.

Commas are little things, too. But unlike speedwell, it seems that some modern writers have forgotten that commas need to separate clauses in compound sentences; they have forgotten that the eye as well as the ear needs to take a break while assimilating information in a story. Most of what I edit in the Piker Press is addition of commas.

I just finished editing a manuscript for an aspiring writer. Almost on every page, I marked up where commas were needed in compound sentences. Bottom line: if you don't want to use commas, break up your long sentences into shorter ones. Think about what you want to say in a paragraph before you write it ... or go back and re-think it after you do. Use the damn comma key, it's not that hard to find with your fingers. Mutter your sentences aloud as you write, and wherever you need to stop and take a breath, or pause to see if your audience hears you, add punctuation.

Yes, some writers can get away with run-on sentences and lack of punctuation, I do agree to that. But most can't.

Here's another little thing: Lillian was at a party this afternoon. At some point, she went to the hostess and asked if she could help in setting out noshes and napkins and things for the guests. The hostess was stunned, and called the congregation of party-ers to note Lil's little offer to help.

Add your commas to your sentences, and teach your kids how to be polite.

Little things mean a lot.

Whaaaaat?

That should be said with a wide open mouth, a grating tone of voice, and a swooping series of notes.

"Whaaaaat?" was how my sister and I read the Little Golden Book "The Three Little Kittens" when the mother cat questioned the kittens about the loss of their mittens.

It was formative. Once, when Bernie and I were in San Francisco, walking along the Embarcadero, I said, "Whaaaaat?" in just that way when he told me about some salacious gossip he'd heard. A passing family heard us, and the little girl with her parents imitated me, "Whaaaaat?" earning a cuff and reproof from her mother. I only hoped that she would continue to use the sound in the future.

So at 7:45 am, when my phone on my bedside rang, I woke groggily, and then jumped and sprang out of bed as a very loud "BOOOOOOOM!!!!" echoed through the room. "An explosion," I thought. "No, wait, thunder? Whaaaaat? In September??"

The phone was Alex trying to wake me to find out where the hell I had my car keys, as the windows of my car were open and it was POURING. I found the keys and flung them at her, then ran to the back patio to bring in the rotissierie oven, which should have been able to live outside until the end of October, at least.

Then we retired to the garage, opened the door, and watched the storms roll across the area, one after another, lightning and thunder and rain and wonderful clouds. Bernie, with only four hours of sleep since he had come home from work, was too fascinated by the weather to sleep, and got up for coffee and doughnuts in the garage as well.

It was beautiful, especially when, right after we'd all gathered in the garage to watch the sky show, a double rainbow appeared.

Neighbor kids and Lillian ran around in glee when it wasn't thundering, rejoicing in a warm and very unusual rain.

Glorious.

Summer 2009

Lil and her pal Elena from across the street got in some desperate summer play today.

Tomorrow Elena won't be home, and the next day ... school starts.

They played in the garage and on the front lawn, then on the back patio, then in Lil's room, then out front again, then in back again, and then in Lil's room, and then out front. They had fun, they had drama; they had sun and then shade. They had a beautifully mild summer day with a sweet breeze, and Sebastian and Howie to play with them.

Born only a few weeks apart, sometimes I hear them play at being sisters.

I wonder often what they would have been like as friends if they had grown up in the kind of world I did. At seven, Lili's and Elena's parents and siblings worry about them crossing our wide street, because utter morons fly along at 45 mph on a regular basis, slurping canned drinks and talking on cell phones, oblivious (or far too self-important to take notice) of the 25 mph limit. When I was seven, Carol Jan and I ranged around our small town on our bikes in the summer (not down town, of course, but everywhere on the east side of town) and we kids spent mornings at the municipal playground, went home for some lunch, then went back to the playground until 5pm, at which point we played in the street or on the sidewalks -- or other kid's houses until dark.

The eyes of every resident in the community were upon us kids, all the time. But it was a town of 1000, and the biggest town in the whole county. People were poor, mostly, and we townies had it real soft compared to the kids on farms outside of town, who worked on their parents' dairies and chicken farms and fields.

Oh well. It was a different planet I lived on then, and it was blown away by "progress" as surely as Superman's home world Krypton fell to destruction. My Home Planet is gone, and Lillian must make her way in this world, however inimicable it may be. How she will grow up is anyone's guess.

That her summer "ends" on August 5th is another post, and it will be a venomous, bitter one.

Fruiting Seasons

Not this past spring, but the spring before, I bought a new nectarine tree, and planted it.

This year it produced a ton of fruit. The fruits are small; we really could have thinned the tree out much more savagely, and I'm not convinced that the poor creature is getting as much water as it should.
Today I went out to swim with the granddaughter of the house, and when I went to the deep end of the pool to dive in, I noticed a small dried-up nectarine on the ground. I started testing the fruit, and found that many (but not all) of the nectarines were ready. I bit into one and got a very big surprise.

I'd bought this tree to replace the one I'd ordered from Stark's nursery catalog (I was going to link but the bastards don't have a website), which was the worst-tasting excuse for nectarines I've ever found. The label on this little tree said that the fruit was known for intense flavor. Yes, intense nectarine flavor is what I was hoping for.

And it is very tasty ... but the label didn't mention that this was a white-fleshed nectarine. Not my favorite. Luck is with my husband, however, who prefers the white-fleshed nectarines to the yellow ones. The granddaughter loves them, too. She and I went out and picked a big bowl of them to chill.

Both the granddaughter and the neighborhood mockingbirds are already after the seedless pearlette grapes, too, even though they won't be fully ripe for another few weeks. Some of them are ripe enough to taste good, some are bitter as only unripe grapes can be. It warmed my old-time scavenger's heart the other day to see Lil out in the back yard filching grapes without a worry in the world.

But today, after we discovered the nectarines, we swam and played in the pool until I was worn out (she wasn't, of course), and when we had harvested our fruit, we rewarded ourselves by jumping into the pool again.

Ah, summer!

Stacking: Pot Feet

These are "pot feet," used to elevate a potted plant off the ground so that it will drain properly.

But that's not what's cool about them. When I swept off the patio the other day, and cleaned up the winter drift of leaves, I found the pot feet in amongst the plants, and put them to the side of the brick structure.

Later in the day, having sat at my desk listening to Lillian noisily playing on the back patio for an hour or so, I looked out to see that she had made lovely use of the clay items.

Perhaps she's a born rock stacker. Maybe that's why she's so madly in love with Jerry Seeger. (He's got rock stacking pics in his gallery.)

Lillian also gave me pause for thought as I passed by her room and saw her standing at her easel, drawing, the a couple days ago. She had a sheet of paper about 15 inches tall and as wide, and on it, she had drawn a figure that went from border to border, top to bottom.

I usually leave a lot of space around my sketches, and they are always in the middle of the paper. I even have a traceable grid to make sure I center the sketch.

Looking at Lil's off-center and stretched drawing, I was stunned. Why not? Why not use every bit of the dimension of the paper? If it looks drawn out (so to speak) -- so what?

I've got to experiment more.

Almost Six, with a Good Dog

Sebastian is Lillian's dog, and she's really starting to bond with him.

At 75 pounds, he weighs more than she does. Even so, one of their games is for her to sit in this comfy chair and call him. He then climbs onto her lap (and chest and legs) and sits on her. She thinks it's hysterically funny.

In this pic, he was helping her put on her shoes for school. I was hoping for a view that would give some perspective of her "puppy's" size, but he's so dark that you can't see his head clearly.

What I'd really like to catch is him dragging her across the carpet with his tug toy.

I had my reservations about a border collie - hound cross, but there is no denying that this dog is perfect for her.