The Low-light Morning

There are fires all around us, close enough that everything outside is sprinkled with fine gray ash.

When the dog woke me up this morning, at 6 am, it was dimmer than it should be. The sun wasn't yet up, but instead of a lightening blue sky, it was ... gray. Not clouds, smoke.

A couple mornings ago we had an unseasonable thunder storm roll through the state, and although we love the sound of thunder and the spatter of rain, the lightning set off wildfires in the baking August heat.

I took this photo with my camera at about 10 am. Yuck, right?

The air stinks, burns our noses, makes us sneeze and cough. No outside exercise, no sitting on the porch, no swimming for the dog, no working in an open studio. No barbecue, no gardening, and forget 'social distancing' -- 'environmental distancing' is the order of the day.

Storm of the Decade?

News services have been running around with their hair on fire all week about the biggest rain storm in a decade to hit California.

"It's going to flood! It's going to cause power outages! It's going to make mudslides and pooling water and mushy ground that makes trees fall over in the HIGH WINDS!!!!"

In the winter of 1997-98, the El Nino rains found me on the south side of my house in knee-high rubber boots with a pickaxe, hacking a trench to try to get the water off my back patio. Our pool had been completed in October, and I'd been trying to grow a lawn...but every time I reseeded, the rains would pour down and drown the seedlings in two inches of standing water. The lawn failed, and we eventually gave up on it, but the trench on the south side worked just fine, and we had no water in the house.

Obviously that was more than ten years ago. Let's try seventeen. So this storm, if it panned out, would pretty much be the Storm of Two Decades -- but that doesn't sound so cool. And indeed, in seventeen years, we all forgot just how icky a big rain season can be. I myself was an idiot, and when I needed to dump a bunch of landscape river rock somewhere, I used the trench on the south side of the house. Quite wrongly I thought water would flow through a channel of river rock. Maybe it would for the first rain, but after years of Valley dust and crumbled falling leaves, no, it sure doesn't.

It's easy to forget heavy rains here in the Central Valley. Spring arrives in February, and Summer ends in November. At Thanksgiving you know you're going to be planting tomatoes in ten weeks, and you just hope there's going to be enough rainstorms to allow you to irrigate your lawn and garden between March and November when it doesn't rain.

And so yes, we have flooding, and power outages, and mushy tree-falls. (The mudslides and sinkholes belong to the Bay Area, not the Central Valley.) Yes, we FORGOT how to maintain the drainage needed for a big storm.

With three days to prepare for the storm, I re-dug part of my south side trench, taking eight buckets of soil (laboriously separated from damned landscape river rock) out to the ranch to fill a hole that Dink had dug in his paddock. I thought that would be good enough.

NOT. Two inches of rain in a little over two hours required some new trenching to allow the water to flow out to the street. Hmm, I've got my own little creek -- can I name it? And the drainage solution we used for the new beautiful brick patio was not up to the flooding, but Bernie was very clever and took one of the pumps from the fish ponds and used it like a sump pump to clear the water from the back of the house.

It's been an interesting afternoon, all righty. I paced from back patio to bedroom patio to kitchen window (where I can see my southside trench) to garage entry to front window to make sure the storm drain in front of our house was clear of leaves, repeat, repeat, repeat. We went out to feed Dink his supplemental senior horse food, and the ranch out there west of town is practically afloat.

Water, water, water, as long as it's flowing, we're good. Fortunately the wood stove is keeping us feeling warm and dry, and the power is on so Bernie can make pizza, which is just the thing to keep hopes up on a rainy, rainy day.

Thank you, God, for the rain.

First Week of November

I woke today feeling better than I have in ... wow, maybe eight months or so.  Felt rested, strong, ready for activity.

Can it be because I got a haircut yesterday? I'd been thinking of letting my hair grow over the winter to keep my head warm, but the tangles after getting out of the shower are so painful to me; I tried a conditioner, but hated the perfume smell and it made my back break out in itchy blemishes. This week I had had enough, and printed out my little Man Haircut picture and drove over to the hair salon. Speaking the ritual words, "I'm not a man, and not young, but this is the haircut I want," I proceeded to have what felt like about a pound of hair removed from my head. A severe, short haircut looks good on me, I think, and I liked what I saw in the mirror this morning.

Maybe it looked good because with the short hair, it was very apparent that I've lost weight -- over 15 pounds -- this past year. That could contribute to feeling good, too.

And last night I dreamt well: an exciting and challenging chase and defeat-the-evil-baddies dream, instead of the nightmares of not being able to find Howie.

The other thing that happened yesterday was dog-related; Jack-Jack, an Australian shepherd with a tendency to roam found a way to let himself into our yard. He lives across the street, and since he's something of an escape artist, I've met him on a number of occasions. He's wonderful, with a luscious blue merle coat and such kind eyes, and when Alex got home last evening and exclaimed, "What is Jack-Jack doing in our yard?" I jumped up from my chair and hurried to say hello to him, getting a nice snuggle in return. God alone knows how and why he came into our yard, but I was thrilled to see him. And you know, if his surly and inattentive owners didn't want him, I'd take him in a heartbeat.

Sitting out on our newest patio a couple nights ago, we watched the moon rise, and I got some passable pics of the event. The one above doesn't do justice to the ripe golden glow I saw, but it's a good moon shot for me. Weather since the rain a week ago has been ridiculously clement, and I could complain that it isn't cold and rainy enough, but you know, November clothing that is suited to a t-shirt with a flannel shirt as a light jacket is not something you sneer at. "Shut up and enjoy it." At least that's what I think I heard God say.

Feels good to feel good.

Hail of a Thing

"HAIL!" shouted Lillian, charging through the house to the front door. "IT'S HAILING!!!"

I dropped the meat fork I was messing with and scurried after her. We stepped out onto the front porch to see hail bouncing along the sidewalk to the tune of thunder peals. "Look how big they are!" She cried in high glee. "I'm going to get some!"

We don't often see hail here; we can go years at a time without thunderstorms, and few of them have hail in them. This was a doozy, however -- those hailstones were bigger than fat peas, and they were coming down hard. When they began pinging off us and the front of the house, we retreated, and simply ran from window to window, laughing and marveling at the miracle of ice flying down out of the sky.

The weather service had forecast a possible thundershower for Friday afternoon, and they got it right in that regard. It did rain, and it did thunder, but they neglected to point out that it would come down so hard that in a matter of minutes, we had two inches of water standing on the back patio, and a veritable river streaming down the south side of the house, and piles of hailstones four inches deep against the fence.

Lil ran outside to glory in the elements for about five seconds -- hailstones hurt when they hit. And the temperature had dropped from a balmy 68 degrees to 48 in about ten minutes.

The little chair is on the front porch, which was sheltered, mostly. By that point, the hail and downpour had stopped, and I had returned to the kitchen and the pot roast I had been browning (it was a little dark, but not burnt), glad of the heat from the stove.

Bernie and I went for a walk later, just to peer at the piles of hail still melting in peoples' gardens and lawns. The air was scrubbed about as clean as it ever gets here in the Central Valley; in addition, if there were any leaves waiting to drop in this area, they were now done.

The geraniums in the background took a bit of a beating, and we lost some tiny oranges that had just set, but the blueberries, the tomato blossoms, and the cherry tree were fine.

The only thing I should have done was shovel up some of that hail and put it in the freezer, so that I can look at it on Wednesday, when the temps are supposed to soar into the 90s.

At Last, Rain

I've been praying for rain, even just a little shower. The Valley air has been so dirty that all of us have been suffering from sinus irritation. Last night, our prayers were answered, and we got that little shower. What a beautiful sound to wake up to: raindrops on puddles.

By afternoon, the rain had stopped, and the black phoebe that usually is our harbinger of rain showed up. We laughed and chided him for being a bit late on his forecast. However, about three hours later, the sky darkened and it began to rain again, indeed, to pour, putting an end to Bernie's tile-cutting outside.

The tools were put away, and then the gutter filled up and overflowed onto the sidewalk, the back patio was under about half an inch of water, and the rain still came down. I went out front with a rake and cleared the storm drain, and John got a shovel and dug a trench on the south side of the house to drain the back patio, bless his heart.

Thank you God for the rain.

Caught Up in a Whirlwind

Thousands upon thousands of fragments spiral around you, catching the light on their shiny-sides, contrasting with the deep blue sky with their golden harvest sides, sparkling, flying, sailing, dazzling, twenty feet wide, seventy feet high ...

We picked Lillian up at her rural charter school and for a change of habit, took Division D road to take us home. On the way, we saw a farmer on a big tractor tilling his field, which had recently held rows of corn. The chaff of his corn-cutting mixed with the dirt, and the breeze conspired with the  fragments to produce a dust-devil, dancing and swirling only about 50 feet away from the road. We stopped the car (there was no traffic behind us) and watched it glittering.

With amazement, we held our breaths as the dust-devil headed toward us, carrying the shreds of cornstalk leaves; with awe we looked around us and up through the Vibe's moon-roof to see the dust-devil move over the car in its mini-tornado, sparks of light and dark and tan weaving through the air above and around us. Within minutes, it had jumped a levee and went to play among the trees along the river.

In 59 years of life, I have never seen anything like that. Inside a dust-devil, who could have thought of such an event. O God, it was so beautiful, thank You for such a blessing.

How does fifteen degrees or so lower than normal sound to you in January?

To me it sounds like:

"Layer, layer, layer. Undershirt, long-sleeved shirt, big t-shirt over that ... maybe an XL flannel shirt? And socks. And my insulated boots."

or:

"Only six more weeks and I'll be planting tomato plants outside. Only six more weeks. Only six more weeks..."

or:

"So much for working in the studio until the end of the month."

or:

"Hey, is there ice on the swimming pool???"

Why yes, my dear, there is.

Sunday, October 7: Well, That's Different

Only a week ago, the temperature in the afternoon topped 100 degrees.

It was a bit late for a heat wave like that; usually the last of the stinking hot weather arrives in mid-September. Fortunately, it was nice and cool in the mornings, so the oppressive heat only lasted a couple hours each day.

When we woke at 6:30 this morning, we weren't very eager to throw off the blankets, and when we got ready for church, I dug to the bottom of my dresser for my favorite black sweater.

I changed after church -- wouldn't want to glurk green chimichurri down the front of that gorgeous sweater -- into a black t-shirt with a flannel shirt over it.

By three in the afternoon, I was able to lose the flannel shirt.

Which had chimichurri glurked down the front of it.

Change of Season

Just as in the Spring, before it is nominally Spring, the season clicks over from Winter to Spring, so too has Autumn arrived, even though the calendar doesn't say so.

The light is different, the air is different, and in spite of the late heat wave, the nights are now suddenly CHILLY, as in You need a comforter, dum-dum. Yes, that chilly.

Tonight's low is supposed to be 56 degrees, but as it is already 59, I think that we may see 40's by daybreak, which is good snuggly-together weather, but will stop tomato production in its tracks.

I feel that I'm seeing too many clouds sweeping through at this time of year, as seen in the photo. Makes me uneasy, though God knows we were too dry last year.

May the Life That Guides the World give us what we need this coming Winter season.

Eclipse and Storm

Not being particularly astronomical in nature, I didn't make it a point to note the time of the solar eclipse the other day. In the back of my mind, I suppose, I figured I'd know it if I saw it.

The evening of said eclipse, we were watching TV (the ever-engrossing Food Channel) when I noticed that the light outside had gone a bit odd. I grabbed a piece of cardstock from the studio, punched a hole in it with a pencil, and ran outside. My pinhole was really ragged, so I punched another (that's why there are two images in the shadow.)

Having been followed outside by most of the rest of the family, I was able to take advantage of Lillian's wits, as she recommended I use the garage door as my "screen." There it was, the eclipse, imaged.

Our neighbors across the street, who were also viewing the eclipse, ran over with some amazing filtered "glasses" with which one could look directly at the sun and see the eclipse. They have been cleverly spending time at our local branch library, where the librarians were giving out these paper-and-plastic eyeglasses for free. It was truly amazing technology, and I wish everyone had access to it.

And then, yesterday, which was the date of my father's birthday, just two weeks before my own, we had a thunderstorm with about 40 minutes of pouring rain. This may not seem like much, but we can go for years here in the Central Valley without seeing a thunderstorm, and certainly any rain at all after March and before November is unusual.

Bernie and I sat in the garage with the door open and watched the weather come through, the ominous dark clouds, the dancing rain, listening to the peals of thunder.

The very first instance in my life that I began to lose my fear of thunderstorms, my dad was standing out on the front porch, watching the lightning and the rain. I hovered at the front door, wanting to be with him, in terror of the loudness of the thunder. My love and belief in him won out, and I crept to his side, seeing how he reveled in the power of the storm.

From then on, I was a storm fanatic, and have loved them so much that a mere peal of thunder during the day draws me to a window to watch the wonder, dropping everything else, and at night, sends me into a deep and peaceful sleep.

So hey, Dad, happy birthday, and though it was two weeks in advance, I'll accept that storm as being my birthday gift, too, and nothing pleases me more.

Twelve Drummers Drumming

 On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me -- Fine Picnic Weather!

No really, it was. 68 degrees and sunshine, folding sling chairs out on the front yard, soaking in the Vitamin D while dining, for Bernie, on a beef tri-tip and provolone sandwich on fresh French bread, and for me, thin slices of tri-tip seasoned with salt and cumin, and French bread slathered with cream cheese.

Simply bliss.

The geraniums are blooming a moderate number of blossoms, the breeze was light and balmy, and Howie lay in the grass at our feet, watching people walk by, keeping an eye on cats prowling in the neighbor's driveway, nose noting every stray scent to be found.

And of course, instead of drummers, just as loud was the traffic as cars roared up and down the street, not at all at or under the 25 mph limit. Hey! Twelve Speeders Speeding ...!

There. Tomorrow is Epiphany. You can take down your Christmas season tree and lights now. Or, if you have things to do tomorrow, and don't want to miss any of the NFL games over the weekend, Monday is all right, too -- Baptism of the Lord, you know, and the Catholic Church's official end of the Christmas Season.

Merry Christmas, every one. May 2012 bring us all peace in our lands, and happiness in our hearts.

Winter

Abutilon at Sunrise

Ah, sunrise. How sweetly the sun gives the flower its first kiss of the day...

Guess again. If the sun is kissy at all, it's around three in the afternoon. Until then, the world is gray and white, thickly shrouded in fog, almost colorless.

Tomorrow is the first day of winter, they say, but I've had enough of winter weather already. The heavy fog traps the particulate matter in the air, and so the Valley, from top to bottom, is under a government "No Burn Day" restriction. That means, to keep warm, we have to run the forced-air furnace.

That means: we don't keep warm. The woodstove would heat the mass of the house; the floor and walls would be warm. The furnace heats only the air, and thus everything we touch is cold.

We need the jet stream to swing south and bring us some nice Gulf of Alaska winds with a spin-in of southern moisture, blow some of this junk out of the Valley, drench the air and get the sooty smog to drop out of the sky.

Also, our turnips need a rain.

Oracle

In those days

at the equinox of the Late Summer Year

the heat rose again as in July

and the people did once again

dip in their swimming pools in luxury

and lament the waning hours of daylight

Two months of summerlike weather

did the people lose that year

two months of gardens growing

two months of sending children outdoors

their tans were lousy

unless they went to a tanning salon

Summer dresses and sandals

tank tops and shorts

the people wore them even though

the sun and the earth declared autumn

"No, Summer will not end!" they cried

"Extend it the two lost months!"

"This cannot be done," said the Lord.

"The sun and the earth have their own agenda

as they must

for the sake of the rest of the world

yet I will help your acceptance blossom

and feed the nimble-tongued toad as well

Thus the Lord

allowed the flies of September to flourish

in their hundreds, in their thousands

flies which knew that Summer ended

and which coveted the houses

and the dinners of mankind

Like a second job

the people took up fly swatting

massing mounds of carcasses

in their kitchens and their porches

in their bathrooms and their dens

and turning their many minds

And so the people stopped their whining

heaved sighs of relief at early sunset

they looked to the skies for tell-tale hints of rain

and began to hunger for the chilly nights

the wearing of sweaters

and the demise of all the filthy, bloated, obnoxious and frantic flies.

The flower in the picture is cyclamen, which is winter color around here. It's begun blooming early, for reasons I don't know. We got two decent tomatoes from cultivated plants, finally, and while I welcome our current hot spell, I have indeed begun to wish for real autumn weather to slow down all these damned flies. They hang on the doors and sail in any time someone comes through; they ride on people's backs like they were on a bus and enter the kitchen to wallow on counter and dishcloth and mashed potatoes.

Ripening tomatoes, or the demise of flies? Well ...

Spring Needs a Few Tweaks

Wait. This was supposed to be the week of the height of the almond blossom bloom. It wasn't supposed to be COLD and rainy. This week should be balmy, and fragrant with almond blossom perfume.

And didn't Alex's book on gardening say that the last frost date for this area is mid-January? And didn't I already have my tomatoes in the ground by the end of February last year?

Alex covered all the frost-tender plants last night, and we'll have to have them covered tonight, too. The storm blew furiously through the area rapidly yesterday, drops of rain dancing four inches off the sidewalk towards the end. The cold temperatures didn't materialize during the rain, so we didn't get the predicted snow, not here.

It looks like we're going to have to get another 1/4 cord of wood on Monday; most years we've used 1  1/2 cords to heat for the winter, but this year, we had to use wood early in the season as well as late, bringing us up to over 1 3/4 cords we've bought.

The cold weather that has dithered around has moderated the blossoms, too; on January 20th I saw my first open almond blossom, and fretted that the bloom was coming too early, but the chill and rainy weather has delayed things somewhat.

Somewhat? Somewhat? Who am I kidding? I hate being cold this late in the year! This is irresponsible, and I'm going to sue the jet stream for cramping my style, or throwing me off my groove, or for mental and physical cruelty! I demand highs in the 60's, or recompense in the form of free long johns!

Under the Fog Monster's Butt

Oh, so dim.

Above the wad of fog that squats in the Central Valley, the sun is shining. In the foothills, people are slathering aloe vera gel on their sunburns, even while grinning at their own discomfort.

People are skiing in the sun, sweating under their down vests in the Sierras, wearing sunglasses to shield their eyes from the glare.

In the Bay Area, diners are sitting outside restaurants, with light sweaters over their shoulders, supping on small sandwiches and sweet, fruity California wines.

But here, from dawn until dusk, the sky is a uniform gray. In spite of knowing that in less than a month, the almond orchards will be beginning their bloom, the gray, low ceiling of the fog weighs on me. We're pretty much out of wood, so the furnace runs at night if the house gets below 64 degrees. During the day, we're setting the temperature at 68.

Crazy! During the sunny times of the year, 68 degrees would figure in my vocabulary as in "Oh, Lord, it's 68 degrees already at 8:00 in the morning! No wonder I'm sweating already! Turn on the fans!"

Today the house was 68, and I was freezing. My hands and feet felt so cold that they hurt, and I could not bear to touch myself, not even to scratch an itch on my bare skin. I put on gloves and a warm jacket, and started walking. Howie was quite agreeable to keep up a gentle jog as I walked as fast as I could. With the damp dark sky above, I prayed a Rosary while I walked, for someone I know who needs prayers very, very much, trying to elevate my mind out of being grumpy and cold.

Howie and I walked through an almond orchard, and my prayer stopped along with my footsteps, for a few moments of thankfulness. There, on the branch of a tree, were buds -- and on each one, pinpoints of white were peeking.

The fog will not last forever.

One Pretty Day

Yesterday the winds did not race across the dusty Valley.

When I got up, it was cool and pleasant, and the sunlight reflected off the pool to cast sweet morning shadows on the retaining wall beneath the alstromeria.

Bernie and I had lunch in Modesto, then came home and swam together in the pool with Howie before he had to leave for work. It was a nice day, and we planned to do more swimming today after lunch.

Well, forget that. By 7 am the branches of the neighborhood trees were thrashing so loudly it made my scalp crawl to listen. I checked the weather ... yet ANOTHER wind advisory, to last all day today, and all night, and all day tomorrow.

And then it's supposed to get hotter than hell.

So much for idyllic California weather.