Tomato Time!

INTRODUCING

Bush Goliath tomato plants!

I had to search for these little bruisers. Last year I found them at Walmart, but this year, I went to Ace Hardware, Lowe's, Walmart, Savemart, and finally found some at Home Depot. Bush Goliath is a compact tomato plant, not above three feet tall, and last year, my one plant produced more tomatoes than all the other plants combined. Indeed, we ate the last tomato from it in October. In the 2012 growing season, I made the Bush Goliath share the planter with Early Girl, but this year, I planted its twin in with it. I gave them both plenty of pelleted fertilizer to start them off, and 1/3 cup epsom salts mixed in the soil around them.

Bernie planted his peppers -- Italian sweet peppers in the round pot, and in back, in a nuclear-proof chimney flue, the notorious jalapeno. Last year, in this same spot, he grew more peppers than he knew what to do with. That's rosemary in front of the pot, by the way.

Still awaiting their permanent home, we have three Early Girls and one buffed Brandywine tomato. I've never grown Brandywine before, so it will be something of an experiment. I understand that the vines grow HUGE, which is something I like in a tomato. I see these tomatoes making a kind of hedge in the front yard, and perhaps a philosophical statement as well.

And there are the little darlings, Sweet Success cucumbers. I'll put a large tomato cage in with them for them to climb on. Last year my cucumber plants didn't do well at all; this year I'm hoping for a better result.

Along with the Early Girls and the Brandywine, I have three Marglobes (my go-to variety for the past couple years) and two Romas that need to go into the ground. And corn. And potatoes. And onions. I think Alex and John will plant their eggplants and artichokes this weekend. And amazingly enough, it's not even Orphan Tomato Rescue Season yet! I have so much to look forward to ...

O Editor, Where Art Thou?

Well, on the floor.

Yes, literally on the floor for most of the past month. You see, I had this flash of artistic vision as to what my kitchen ought to look like ... and then, what the floor ought to be. I wished for natural slate, but after running a thumbnail across a sample in the tile store, realized that two big dogs would leave toenail scrapes everywhere that would ruin the look. The solution: porcelain tile with a slate look ... and when nearly three years had elapsed, we had the cash to make it happen, more or less.

I have no idea what made me think that I could lay tile in any accurate or appropriate manner. Or what made me think that it would be easy. All I can imagine is that angels were whispering things to me in my subconscious, and then laughing themselves senseless afterwards.

Lowe's had a nice tile called "Castlestone Harvest" that I fixated on, and off we went at the beginning of March, me thinking we could tile the kitchen/family room in a week. I knew from talking to a slate tile salesman that we'd need to lay out the pattern before we ever mixed a bit of adhesive, and we did, at least the first bit.

We began with the white marble hearth. Multiple persons tried to convince me to tear it out and have a cohesive tile not only on the hearth but on the fireplace itself, but I held to my black/white-and earthtones design. From that hearth tile, we ran a laser line to the front of the house, finding that there was a line to the front door entry tiles, off by half an inch due to sloppy chalklines made by the original builders, who were paid cheaply by the hour, and did not care about their work.

We began from the back room's focal point, the hearth, and put in a border of itsy-bitsy tiles -- and built out from there, adhering to our laser line to keep things straight.

Now here's the thing: if you want your tiling done right, and in a timely manner, hire a professional crew. Yes, it's damned expensive, but unless you are an artistic-vision control freak, you really want to spare yourself the physical agony of tiling.

It hurts.

Even with knee-pads, your knees and ankles will kill you. Your back will scream with the effort of bending, and your elbows from the lifting of heavy tiles. Your hands and wrists will swell from the effort of placing and pressing and leaning and prying up -- tiles are heavy, as compared to plates and pots from dinner or shovels and rakes from cleaning horsey paddocks. Indeed, nothing I have ever done has ever compared to the effort involved in tiling.

Truly, it was a learning experience.

Things I learned:

• Yes, Virginia, you DO have to remove the baseboards. You'll be thankful you did, later.
• Buying tile from "big box" stores will get you unevenly-sized tiles. That can be okay if you know it in advance and have a tile saw to trim off that aberrant 1/8" on the one side.
• If you're going to do it yourself, buy a decent tile saw. Expect to spend $250 at least.
• And a laser line to make your chosen reference points perfect. No, seriously. Use the tools of the present age.
• Open up your boxes of tile two or three at a time. One of our boxes was apparently a "return" -- the returners had picked out of the box all the bright and interesting colors and replaced them with grays from other boxes.
• After grouting, and smoothing the grout with a sponge, let the thing dry, and then wipe off the haze with a dry old towel. It will save you a bazillion arm swipes with the wet sponge as you clean up the grout haze. You still need the wet sponge step, but it is greatly minimized.
• YouTube is priceless. Watch a hundred how-to's.

Now here's the thing: it's easier to hire someone to lay the tile, if a lot more expensive. But the fact is, every single one of those tiles is set by me for color contrast, direction of "grain," visual impact, and focal points. I knew where I wanted the eye to land and be led. Opening up several boxes of tiles and finding four or five outstanding colors and squeaking "Ooh! I know exactly where this tile should go!" is something an installer would never be able to replicate.

The result was simply stunning. The cabinets (a bit weathered after 20 years but I wanted to keep them like that) and the family room sofa and chair, the stained white marble hearth, and the tables absolutely glow on the slatey floor. We have an area rug to use, but can't bear to do so yet -- the tile is so lovely.

Sometime in the not-too-distant future, I'll have a day when there aren't baby toys scattered everywhere, and I'll post a pic or two of the rooms. One special one that picks up my Audubon bird prints that hang on the wall ... not planning it in advance, the colors of the tiles echo the predominate colors and tones of the prints.

Bliss.

The Next Ride

Yes. We went to Camanche Reservoir the next day, and the weather was pretty much perfect, in the high sixties with a bit of breeze: that means we were warm and needed no coats in the sun, and didn't sweat too much due to the breeze.

The China Gulch Trail at Camanche winds through cattle pasturage, and the bridle path is wide enough for three horses to go side by side (mostly). That's the good news, along with the beautiful views.

The bad news is that the trail is all gravel and stones, which the horses do not care for underfoot, and all uphill and downhill, which the horses and their aging riders did not especially care for. The stones and gravel bruise the horses' feet at times, in spite of horseshoes, and make the footing going downhill a bit tricky. And the up- and down-hill ...

I can't say how Cathy the Mad Horsewoman and Jerry the Alabama Cowboy felt while riding. They have heavy Western saddles, which may provide them with a bit more support than I have with my lightweight English Wintec -- I definitely have to ride with my legs engaged to maintain balance side to side and back to front. Perhaps I should ask them about that next time. On my part, by the time we were done, my flabby old legs were shaking and screaming at the exertion.

(Now that may sound horrible, but for a life-long horsey junkie like me, it is exactly what your legs long for, and a feeling that fills one's heart with happy-cooties, even while causing one to drag, zombie-like, to set out the picnic lunch afterward.)

The scenery was gorgeous, with weathered stone bluffs in the distance, and the lake glinting improbably blue in the distance (the photos don't do it justice), and the joy of watching our horses' expressions -- it was a wonderful ride. But for me, the best part of the strenuous day was arguing with Dink at every hill, when he wanted to charge ahead in a forging trot, and feeling him eager to keep going on and on to see what else there was to see.

The last time we were at Camanche, I was afraid he was dying.  But he did great this time; in fact he was a bit of an ass, but that's Duquesne all the way. He remembered the gate into the park, and positioned himself flawlessly for me to open it from his back. Only after the gate was closed and his mental "work" was done did he begin prancing and puffing to get on with the ride.

We saw a million woodpeckers, heard meadowlarks, watched buzzards and hawks sail through the sky; three mule deer spooked when they heard us come over a ridge, and big grazing cattle watched us warily. We saw a calf chase a gaggle of geese just for fun.

It's bedtime now, and I am still tired from that ride, my legs and arms still threatening to go on strike or something, even with 24+ hours of rest.

Love it.

The Childhood Dream

Well, if you were riding with me, and decided to take a picture during the ride, naturally you'd get my back and Dink's roany rear end.

Dink's had a rough winter, but is on the mend, or at least as much of a mend as a horse who will be 23 this year can have. He's put on some weight, and regained his need to be The Horse, out in front, leading everyone else.

Eddie, on the right, carrying Cathy the Mad Horsewoman, has learned from walking beside Dink that it's better to lag a little behind; when he gets up too close to the side of Dink, Dink will occasionally flatten his ears at Eddie, which is Horse language for "Push your luck and I will knock the shit right out of you." Eddie is too smart to push his luck.

We rode Woodward Reservoir yesterday, reveling in the lack of campers and dog trainers and goose hunters. The dirt roads are getting grassy with winter, the hills green with new grass. The reservoir itself has been half-drained, exposing sandy beaches. The resultant green land, clean yellow beaches, and brilliantly blue water makes me think of an exotic beach location, maybe a lush island, maybe the Riviera. Maybe Madagascar.

We rode on the roads on the way out, but on the way back, I led the way onto the exposed sandy expanses. At times it was like riding through a desert, with the soil/sand cracked and dried by the sun; but then, as we neared our camp, it was like riding on the beach, with the sandstone and sand challenging our horses, the wind blasting us and raising whitecaps on the remnants of the lake.

Gorgeous.

After being raked, hoed, and pounded by the wind, sitting down to eat our sandwiches and chips and drinks felt like true luxury, even though the wind was so cold we couldn't take our coats off, and had to sit on saddle blankets at the cement picnic table to keep from freezing our butts off.

Being The Chuck Wagon as well as being the Woman on the Horse that Has To Be Out in Front, I made the grub. Sandwiches were semi-subs of seasoned turkey, bologna, salami, and cheese, or chicken with stuffing-seasoned mayonnaise. There were potato chips, and oranges, and bottled water or diet soda. (I brought wine for myself, a cheap but tasty pinot grigio decanted into an empty plastic water bottle. Classy, no?)

That's Dink on the left, tied to the trailer behind Cathy the Mad's glitzy new truck, and Eddie on the right, both of them watching us eat sandwiches with envy. Don't pity them -- we let them graze on the reservoir's land's rich green grass before we ever sat down.

If I had seen this adventure when I was seven, I would have said, "Yes! That's what I want to do when I grow up! I could never have enough of that!" I tried to remember that feeling as I oozed up the home sidewalk afterward, every muscle feeling like worn-out jelly.

We had a wonderful ride, and I hope the horses are rested because tomorrow, Thursday, we're riding out again at Camanche Reservoir.

Our friend Nikki took these pictures; I'm hoping tomorrow that I can take a few of my own.

Arting

This week in the Piker Press, Michael Price has a story, "The Health Club Gallery Tour."

I did this picture for the cover, but my intention is to add to it as I get the other pictures done. Some will be simple, some not so.

This marks my first foray into colored pencils in about seven years, if not more. I was inspired -- bewitched -- by Alex's use of colored pencils on her blog, Zombie Mommy.

Maybe "inflamed" is a better word.

Anyway, I started out with small pieces of bristol, and a quick pencil sketch, then added permanent lines with a Pilot Precise V5, and then had at it with the colored pencils.

The work took longer than I thought it would, but that was fine, because I was really enjoying it. I did not care to go back in the warm house (the studio is perfect today) so I worked on the second of nine images that will eventually grace Michael's story. (I use the term "grace" very liberally.)

I even studied Picasso paintings for a different feel.

Different, and delightful.

Just Say No

Wednesday was Horseshoeing Day.

I'd taken the shoer's call the day before (he has us on an 8-week schedule) and planned on being out there an hour before he was to arrive, so as to clean out Dink's paddock (a necessary job) and let Dink blow off some steam if he wanted to. My plan was to be the first out there, my horse ready, get my horse shod and get the hell home. Two hours, tops, maybe less, because Rodger Gordon the shoer doesn't piss around.

I had moved only a few horse patties when one of the other two folks who were having their horses shod showed up. "We have to have the mare done first, because her owner isn't going to be here, and he wants me to hold her, and I have to leave for an appointment in not too long."

In other words, "We both have shit to do, and know that you don't, so you won't mind wrapping things up, right?"

In point of fact, I didn't have pressing things to do, if you don't count working on the Piker Press (haha, funny, yes?) or cooking the midday meal in time to avoid the Heartburn Train that rolls in early these days. Or laundry, or dog-walking (which is more important than it sounds), or writing, or painting ...

The request wasn't unreasonable, and so I just cleaned up Dink's paddock, clipped a lead line to the mare's halter after luring her to her gate ("Oh, you're doing that already?") and when the shoer pulled in, handed off the mare. We got the gelding tied up and started as well, and I went and got Dink, and brought him out to the yard and tied him. The shoeing of all three horses went well, but I made a decision, having spent more than two hours more time than I intended at the ranch.

Time to say NO.

Yesterday morning, I got up, fed the dogs, said my morning prayers, and picked up the phone. "No, I am not going for a trail ride today. I'm tired, and I'm going to go back to bed." Saying no to eight hours of prep, saddle, and waiting around for other people to get their horses ready gave me a whole day to do some really necessary shopping, almost all the laundry, the cooking of a complicated and luscious midday meal, and some Press work, too. And when that was done, I had the sweet pleasure of sitting in the sunset light with my husband and admiring the blossoms on the eucalyptus tree, and how the sunbeams hit them just so ... had I gone on the trail ride, I'd be just dragging in, exhausted by the exertion and the stress of knowing there was so much at home that needed to be done.

I also said NO to continuing the writing challenge. Some days I'm just too tired, and some days I spend more time on art work, or nitpicky culinary feats. When I write, I rarely write for only 15 minutes, and when I don't want to write ... I really DON'T want to write.

In addition, I've firmed up my decision to say NO to letting this lady's kid ride my horse. He thinks Dink is wonderful, and that's cool. When I gave the lad a ride early last year, I wasn't riding 20 hours a week, and didn't have a new grandbaby in the house to spend time with. Also the kid's mom thinks she can get away with something. If the boy is horse-crazy, she needs to get him some lessons with a competent instructor. I told her that. "I'm sure he'd much rather have you teach him," was her reply. What do they call that, a passive-aggressive response? If she did her homework, she'd know that a good instructor charges $50/hr. Yes, I'm also sure that she would rather have her kid taught to ride by someone who would obviously do such out of the goodness of her heart rather than for money.

Anyway, I have no idea how many days Dink has in his horsey heart, and I don't want to spend them on some kid hauling on him, and I'll add to that by saying if Dink gets fed up with a stranger hauling on him, I don't honestly know what Dink will do. He might just stop and stand; he might bite the shit out of the kid, and then where am I?

No. No. No. No. No.

Oh, yeah, I also said no to Cathy the Mad Horsewoman, who wanted a trail ride at the reservoir tomorrow. "No," I told her, "I want to do some arena work with Dink." Arena work will be about 40 minutes, and then I can send him back to his breakfast, and me to the next issue of the Press.

Will I walk with Howie tomorrow?

Yes.

Tile-licious!

After three years of bare cement, this year we should be able to address the lack of cement floor covering, and this is a hint of what is to come.

We've chosen a porcelain tile with a color profile that ranges from gray to red, in 12-inch tiles and 6-inch tiles, and this pattern will predominate throughout. We bought these sample tiles today.

Bernie and I intend to do the installation ourselves -- the cost of hiring someone to put the tile down for us is insanely prohibitive for us, and frankly, I'm so sick of bare concrete that I'm willing to endure yet another learning experience if I can have a floor that doesn't have slab cracks and dings in it, and isn't cement gray throughout.

This tile is about as close to the colors of natural slate that we could find, and won't have the need-to-seal issues and the ohmigod-the-dogs'-toenails-are-scratching-it issues that natural slate would have.

A scary project, though. The layout of the tiles alone is going to be epic.

WTF Blogger?

I have been working with the 15-minute blocs of writing -- indeed, I have written a movie review, an additional batch of words for the Aser Murder Mystery, and I'm going to count this blog entry, too, when it's done. I didn't try to write yesterday, it being Super Bowl Day, and me being required to advise both Harbaugh brothers on how to coach their teams. A Harbaugh coach's team won the Super Bowl, and I can't say whether or not it was due to my advice. I did what I could.

Nevertheless, I was going to post what I had written for "Murder Mystery" but Blogger, when I copied and pasted the paragraphs from Word, made the text appear in two different types -- annoyingly different types. And today, when I opened Blogger to post a new bit, I'm finding a really, REALLY basic version. WTF?

Is it me, or is it Memorex?

Aside from the blog wreck, I had a great day today. A trail ride through Central Valley orchards with a chatty companion was delightful, although a bit longer than I'd planned for. The chatty companion held forth on orchard irrigation options (flood vs drip) and grower-end problems of farming, and owl-box management. Coolness!

And Dink is improving, gaining some weight back, and has LOTS of energy back.

There, 15 minutes, I'm done.

ZZZZzzzzzzzz.

Dodging a Bullet

This past week, I had to run clothes through the dryer twice in order to get them to dry.

And then even twice wasn't doing it.

And then, the dryer began to smell funny during its cycle.

Great, I thought, I just fork out $$ for a futon to sleep on, and now the dryer decides to die. I figured it was laundromat time again for a while, but Bernie -- oh, how fortunately -- has better sense than I. He pulled the dryer away from the wall, and found some wet spots on the linoleum, and some damp lint in the vent.

A man of merit, he collected his trusty plumbing snake and ran it up the vent. Gobs of wet lint fell out, much to my utter disgust. We cleaned that up, and then he turned to the dryer itself. Having learned (from an internet source) how to tear the front of the dryer off, he proceeded to do so, and discovered about a fluffy peck of lint -- maybe more -- packed inside the dryer, blocking the fan.

Once that was out, the air flow in the dryer was much better, but our internet search on how to clean dryer vents uncovered an astonishing fact: a clogged dryer vent can get your home burned down around your ears.

Hell, I didn't know about that. Every other place we've lived had a dryer vent that led right outside the wall of the laundry room, not up through a volume-ceiling structure through attic and roof. Bernie found this link to a dryer-vent cleaner, and we decided to buy one the very next day.

Sure am glad we did. Look at this junk that came out of the vent above where the plumbing snake would go. It was wet, and DENSE!!!

What if that junk dried out in the summer, and the clogs made the dryer overheat? It would be like a bomb. Or what if that mass collected all the moisture from the laundry, clogged the vent completely, and made the dryer burn itself out? A decent dryer costs a lot more than the Gardus cleaning set -- the 10-piece set cost about $30, and the extension kit (for our high roof peak) about $18 -- and now our dryer vent is spiffily clean.

The kit, which you power with an electric drill, was hugely easy to use, and the whole job took about 30 minutes. Bernie finished it up by blowing the remaining dust out of the vent with our leaf blower. (The kit comes with an adaptor for leaf blower and vent for just that reason.) I stood outside and watched white linty dust FLY out of the roof vent, and then the air ran clear.

God, I'm glad we discovered this before we had a fire. Vent cleaning will commence on a yearly basis ... we won't let another 20 years go by before it's done again.

Fun Is Hard Work

Today began with a 7am wake-up. I really didn't want to get up that early, but I had a trail-ride scheduled, and that meant I had 2 hours to come up with a cover image for the Piker Press.

And to eat breakfast, get dressed, and make lunch for three riders.

I had a couple reference photos to work from, and chose to use pastels on black paper. Six colors only. The result was simplistic but worked. I photographed it, loaded it to my computer, and darkened the background, correcting the glare of the light on the paper.

I like the pants the best, and the shoes weren't too bad.

Then it was off to the kitchen to make sandwiches on french rolls (cheese, salami, bologna, turkey) and vinaigretted lettuce to add later; I packed chips and oranges and soft drinks into my cooler-on-wheels, and off I went for the ride.

Which was exotically beautiful, because Woodward Reservoir has been partially drained, exposing yards and yards of sandy beach. The grasses are green (green is our winter color) but the weeds were brown, and beyond the golden beach, the water was bright blue, and crested with little whitecaps on the waves. Sunshine kept us warm enough.

Whitecaps? On a reservoir?

Yezzz, the wind was up, about 15 mph, stirring the water. And right out of the north, so we needed the sun to keep us warm enough.

When we had our sandwiches after the ride, I watched the waves on the reservoir, just drinking in the gold and blue and green, glad to be done with the saddle, looking forward to a hot shower at home. Dink, after a week of good food, had been a handful -- he can't wait to get out on a new trail, and always starts out like he's on fire. That's good, that meant he's improving, health-wise, but wow, it also meant I had to ride like I knew what I was doing, not slog along like a sack in the saddle.

Good sketch, good ride, good day.

More Art Bits

One of the stories in the Piker Press the other week was "Me" by Michael Price.

The story is about a very self-absorbed young man, and I remembered I had a pic of a narcissus stowed away in my Flickr account.

But while a narcissus may symbolize self-absorption, garage siding, the front bumper of a Vibe, and the neighbor's tree do not.

In Photoshop, I copied the leaves on the bottom left, and pasted them on other parts of the photo. Then I 'selected' only the narcissus flower itself and put it on top. A 'paint daubs' filter gave me the texture I was looking for, and thus I ended up with an illustration that pleased me greatly.

 
I do believe I also used Edit-->Transform-->Scale before I did the 'paint daubs' treatment.

And added a border by pasting the color pic onto a new field of black, merging the layers, and cropping off all but a medium frame of black.

This goes to show that we should take pics of everything in case you ever need a pic of anything.

Maybe someday I'll even have a use for my photo series "Things on the Back of Trucks."

The Old Horse

My horse, Dink, is 23 years old this year. That's old.

We got him when he was two; a friend of ours had been called out to deal with him -- a breeder of Appaloosa cutting horses said to our friend, "If you can get him out of that paddock and off my property, you can have him -- just don't tell anyone he came from here."

Now why would anyone give up a purebred Appaloosa? Why, because he was smallish, and meaner than pig-tracks. Our friend thought he'd use the colt to breed his mares, and get some quality bloodlines into their offspring, but his wife nixed the idea when she saw the colt, saying, "Not with that little dink, you won't."

In turn, our friend offered Alex the colt, saying if she would get him cut, (castrated) she could have him.

And she did. With a nod to our friend's wife, we called him Little Dink informally, but named him Lord Duquesne. Names matter, they really do. We gave him dignity, and bravery, naming him after an 18th Century fort in Pennsylvania. (And maybe a little double-entendre for fun, as there was a beer called Duquesne back in the day, also.)

Alex gentled that mean colt with skill and intuition; he never bucked, accepting a saddle and rider with willingness and intelligence. We've rarely had to explain anything to Dink twice. Alex finished growing up and got married, and had no time for riding, what with a full-time job and all sorts of adventures that are her province for the telling, and Dink came to me. I did some finessing with rein and heel and leg cues; he brought to the partnership a willingness to carry me and respect for my leadership.

Twenty-one years with this horse.

Since this past summer, he's lost seven inches of girth -- that's the measurement around his chest just behind his legs. I've been ranting about it to the ranch manager since last July, but she kept saying, "Oh, you've been riding more, or maybe it's worms ..."

Last week I went to the pasture to get Dink for a trail ride. His pasture-mate, "Larry" was standing over their hay, and Dink was having to pick for bits underneath the much bigger (and fatter) horse. On the trail ride, up at Lake Camanche, at one point, Dink just ... stopped. Dink doesn't stop. Dink is the intrepid one who will keep on going eagerly into new places -- sometimes too eagerly. He just doesn't stop and stand, resting, unwilling to go forward.

After the ride, I grew a spine, and told the ranch owner I wanted Dink out of pasture and in a paddock until I could see he was all right. He agreed, as there were a couple paddocks open. I bunged Dink into one and gave him some "senior feed."

The next day I went to see him around noon. The ranchers had brought "Larry" up out of pasture into the next paddock (Larry screams and screams if Dink isn't nearby) and I saw that Larry had eaten all his hay -- but Dink was still grazing at his. Duuhhhhhh. Dink is old and not eating fast, and Larry had been chowing down most of their feed.

It's not been a full week yet, but Dink is already looking better. I rode him on an easy trail ride, and in the arena a few days later, and his energy level is already much improved. The ranch manager has agreed with me that Dink should be given extra rations until he fattens up again.

Maybe he will, and maybe he won't. I hope he does, but he is, as I said, 23 years old, which is quite a venerable age for a horse.

I love seeing his head lift quickly, with ears pricked, when he hears me whistle for him and shout, "Duquesne!"

Catching up on Art Stuff

I'm still loving up the 15-minute art project idea. It worked really well for gift tags at Christmas time.

I started with some VERY cheap brown paper we scored at Lowe's, paper that is meant to be used as masking paper for painters to mask off windows and stuff they don't want to spatter paint on.

The paper -- in huge rolls for about $10 -- had a nice medium tooth to it. I don't know how it will hold up to light and age, but for 15-minute projects and practice pieces it will be fine.

I began by cutting my pieces of paper, no mean feat considering the dampness of the weather and the penchant for the paper to curl like Lillian's hair.

Then I soaked them on my polyurethaned watercolor boards, to stretch the paper and get it to lie flat. There's a slight finish on the masking paper, which I thought (correctly) the water would break down.

Once all four pieces were well and truly yummily wet and flat, I went at them with my cheap watercolor paints, swiping in broad shapes.

I kept the board with the papers flat, not wanting any runs if I could help it.

I'd decided on four seasons, one for each of my housemates, excluding baby Joan, who would only appreciate the art if she could munch on it.

After the initial splats of paint, I had to let each one dry a bit. Then I came back at them with additional pigment, thicker watercolors.

Another drying time had to come, and with it, the realization that the paper had held much more dampness than I'd expected, and most of the pigment had bled out into the brown paper.

The answer? More pigment, of course! I did some thicker blobs of color, and let it dry again.

And dry it did, and began to curl again, so I taped it down with little masking tape doughnuts (tape curled with the sticky side out, making it two-sided) and then had at it with pastels, just a bit here and there, to add texture and definitive lines.

I gave all four a quick spritz of fixative and set them out to dry yet another time.

With the Spring and Autumn ones, I also used an indelible ink pen to help with the trunk lines.

And then, I added a sentiment to each of my beloveds, to be carried on their Christmas gifts.

I photographed each of these against black paper; the angle of the camera gives them that not-quite-square look.

All in all, the project took considerably more than fifteen minutes, but each stage was short, and could be done in little bits in between other pressing daily matters.

I like the brown craft paper as a medium. The tooth is nice, and the color pleasantly neutral. Once our weather moderates, I'd like to cut a bunch more of it into manageable sizes and use it for pastels.

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.

January 2013

If there is a more cheerful-looking flower than a pansy, I can't think of it.

Orchids can be elaborate, but many come off looking predatory or menacing; roses are luxurious, yet stand-offish. Camellias have their own agendas, and alyssum just runs riot and tramples all over anything, with total disrespect for other flowers' personal space.

But the pansy has a winning smile for everyone, all the time.

January is our bleahhhhhh month; colder than December, the days are frequently socked in by Tule fog -- everything feels chill and damp and dull and your toes hurt.

Pansies are winter color here in the Central Valley, and I appreciate every little smile they bring.

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!

Sleepy One

A chilly December evening, and on my side of the bed is my dog Howie, soundly asleep, nose curled underneath him, tail keeping his hind legs warm, his stripes not at all clashing with the purple flowers on my pillowcase.

He's confident about taking over my half of the bed; he knows that when Muvver beds down for the night, she won't order him off. Why not, when he has his own cushy pillow bed beside the dresser?

In one of those weirdo old age phases, for some unknown reason, I've begun having painful back and shoulder issues when I sleep. Painful enough that I wasn't sleeping well at all. I'd shift from right to left, rearrange my pillows, move my legs ... and then fall back to sleep only to awaken again with a numb left arm and a burning ache of muscle spasms from the base of my skull to mid back.

Of course, the less I would sleep, the more tense I would get, and the worse the symptoms. Feh. What was more, I was keeping Bernie awake with my shifting and sighing in the night.

Fed up with disturbing Bernie's sleep, one night last week I hoicked myself out of bed in the dark, found a thick throw blanket, which I threw on the floor. I found (by touch) a sheet and a couple extra blankets, and curled up on the carpet beside the bed.

The next morning I felt better rested than I had in weeks.

On subsequent nights, I added another thick throw to make my sleeping pad, and I am in absolute bliss. My dreams are better, more peaceful. I wake with energy and no pain. My arm doesn't fall asleep. The muscle spasms have stopped. And I find it easier and less old-woman-achey to get up from the floor than I did from the bed.

Muvver now sleeps on a mat beside the bed. Why shouldn't Howie curl up on the bed to keep his Daddeh company? At least while Daddeh naps. At night, Howie returns to his cushion on the floor, too. Maybe he has the same achey issues as I do. Who knows? We just find solutions when we can.

The picture above is Howie curled on my pillows, rendered in Paint program.

Hey, This Was Fun!

Yes, this was what I had in mind when I came up with my next idea for a 15-minute art project challenge.

I went out into the pouring rain and found five eucalyptus leaves (unmunched by leaf-cutter bees) and a sycamore leaf. Howie assisted by snatching leaves out of the gutter-full of rainwater and tearing them to bits -- that's his idea of gathering autumn leaves. I was simply looking for a few that were flat.

I slathered thick white watercolor paint on them, put them paint-side down on various papers, and then weighted them down with cardboard panels and cans of beans. Not crushed pineapple, not sauerkraut, beans. Butter beans and garbanzo beans, if you like specificity.

That was enough for one day.

The following day, I peeled the leaves off the paper to find lovely ghostly leaf prints. And over the next couple days, I added touches of pastel pencil to each.

There were three of these little projects: one was on cheap black construction paper, one on a not-quite-as-cheap gray craft paper, and the pictured one on Aquabee Bogus Rough Sketch, an unbleached paper that always disappoints me with its uneven tooth. You can see all three at my Flickr gallery.

I don't think I've had so much enjoyment from an art project in decades. It was simple, it produced a charming result, and it was FOR NO REASON. Cheap paint, on very cheap paper. Is that a waste? No, I guess not.

Today we took a walk, and on the way back, I collected another handful of variously-shaped leaves. Guess what I'm going to do with them!

15-Minute Art Challenge

A grand idea. Take 15 minutes and do something creative. Just 15, that's all. And not counting prep time, either, which was a good rule because I spent nearly half an hour getting tape residue off my watercolor board, the result of my being too lazy to untape the last watercolor I did.

Goo Gone works well for that.

And then, while I was waiting for the Goo Gone to work, I noticed that the pantry shelves (my studio is right beside the pantry) were untidy, so I scuffled through them for a while. And started some laundry.

Eventually the goo was gone, and my implements prepared. (Incidentally, if you use cheap tube watercolors, use them up, otherwise they clog like my little tube of Lamp Black there in the pic.)

I soaked the paper on both sides, wanting a really juicy variegated wash. I mixed some of the Chinese White with the Lamp Black to make a gray, and slopped those pigments onto the paper. Black first, then gray, then white. I had to re-wet the paper several times, in spite of the damp from today's rain.

Once it's dry, I'll take a better picture.

When the paper is soaked on both sides, it lies flat on the board, which is nice.

And possibly the best result of this exercise was that I woke up thinking about what I wanted to do -- and while I was doing it, suddenly knew what I want to do on the next 15-minute stint.

The Day Before the Day Before Rain

There was fog today. Not the can't-see-across-the-street fog, but it was pretty substantial. The morning temps were in the mid-30s.

My studio has no heat, except for a small radiant heater that warms up the heater-side of me and not a lot else. But I did re-discover my winter riding boots, and let me tell you, those things are so insulated you can't tell if you're standing in snow or on cement in a studio. I dusted them off (how many years had they been on a shelf, unused?) and have been wearing them on chilly mornings in the studio. Perfection. Add my NaNoWriMo extra-large hoodie and fingerless gloves, and I'm good to go.

I've been trying to learn how to manage the Piker Press Forums ... I want to clean them up so that they better suit the tastes of the people that actually use them. Not a lot of people -- as one Piker recently put it, "Forums are so 80s." Still, it's nice to have them to leave a message for others: "Can't be there online tonight, my dog's on fire" or such. Or a silly writing game. Anyway, it's been yet another learning experience. I thought I was done with learning experiences for a while, but maybe it's part of adulthood, realizing that the learning experiences just don't ever really stop heading your way.

Tomorrow is supposed to be the last clement day for a week; I myself am looking forward to a bunch of rainy gray days, during which I can catch up on Press work and maybe even get some prime writing time.

A Sun-Kissed Autumn Evening

Generous warmth from Old Man Sun
Showers down on everyone.
Glowing photons form the hugs
For people, plants and even bugs.

That's right, all those little dots dancing in the late evening sunset are gnats. Cool, aren't they? Glad they were across the street.

Viva Teeny Eggs!

In today's American culture, bigger is better. A soda at the gas station should be at least a quart. A sub sandwich should be a foot long. A family car should be an SUV. A starlet should have C-cup boobs, even if she only weighs about 105 pounds.

I don't agree with "bigger is better," especially as I have grown older. Having to get bigger pants is downright annoying!

Now see that big brown egg? That's a Jumbo Organic Brown egg, and we purchased two flats of them at the poultry farm down the road from us. Their hens were laying so many Jumbo Browns that we got two flats for $5 -- 40 eggs. In a store, for Large Organic Brown eggs, we'd be paying between $3.99 and $4.99 a dozen for them. And at the poultry farm, they're so fresh and healthy and delicious ... well, we don't buy eggs at the store any more.

Delicious as that Jumbo brown egg will be over corned beef hash, it doesn't hold a candle to the teeny egg beside it.

A good friend of ours has a big back yard, and she's been raising Bantam Silkie chickens. She and her family came to dinner at our house last weekend, and she brought us a dozen of her flock's beautiful, ivory-colored little eggs.

What a treasure! What a fine gift! The flavor and texture of the Silkie eggs far surpasses any other egg I have ever had. The yolks are intensely orange, and so delicious that eating even the poultry farm's good eggs seems like a punishment.

Now I do get a kick out of occasionally buying Super-Jumbo eggs, which are almost comically huge, but from now on, my heart belongs to Teeny.

Autumn Arrangement

Some filthy gophers killed John's artichoke plant this summer, but not before it bloomed. The dried heads are beautiful, though, retaining their purple color. Beside them sits an old tequila bottle with fern bracken in it. An autumn display.

I thought it would make a nice composition, but it really didn't. I don't know if the fern pine was too distracting, with its bluey-greens, or if it was just too "staged."

'Tis okay to fail with compositions, though. Not every photo op works out well. (Look at the pics of starlets at openings and events -- argh.) The main thing is to just keep trying. The more you try, the closer you get to what you want to present.

There is a photographer/writer I know, whose pictures are always inspiring, and when she doesn't keep uploading pics to her gallery, I feel the lack deeply. I want to shout at her to take more pictures, good, bad, indifferent, just get them up there and let me see she still has the passion.

Yeah, I need to do that, too.

Dia de los Muertos, 2012

Today is the feast day of All Souls.

Or Day of the Dead. Dia de los Muertos.

My mother never would have considered honoring the day, except to say that we should pray for those who have died; if she could have hidden from the general public that she was Mexican, I'm sure she would have. However, in Central Pennsylvania, which was in her time so very white and genetically homogenous, her dark-tanning skin and classic Aztec-ian features stood out so that she might as well have carried a billboard on her grand broad shoulders that said "FOREIGNER!!!"

Culturally Mexican (though without the benefit of the secret language) and outwardly white (my cousin Susu and I were the only ones in our generation who turned out with reddish-blonde hair and freckles) I can totally sympathize with people who have a hard time identifying themselves within their populations. I never felt "at home" in Pennsylvania, and when we moved to California, and I began attending Mass in Spanish, I cried, because everybody looked like my cousins.

In spite of Mom's denial of her lineage, Alex and I cling to what Mexican customs we can. Today, Alex decorated the hearth in honor of the day, and it's truly beautiful.

We had the neighbor's kid in the house until evening, and Bernie and I were seeing the first showing of a movie in order to do a review, so we didn't get around to dedicating our midday meal to one or another dead relative. We'll get around to that, in the not-too-distant future.

But in the mean time ... Mom, I read a cartoon strip series last week that had the son begging his mother not to show up to talk to his creative writing class. His mom's friend says to her, "Would you have wanted your parents in one of your high school classes?" The mom answers, "No -- of course not!" Huh, really? Mom, I would never have said that. You were one hell of an entrepreneur, and though we butted heads from time to time, you had my back, and made me confident, and I would have loved to have you in my high school classes. You were da bomb.

Dad ... I miss you so. I miss all the stuff I wanted to wheedle out of you about your childhood, your family, your military service. I wish I could have wandered around the mountains with you more, I wish you could have snuck down to the river with me to fish and catch crayfish.

Jan, you taught me so much in the last weeks of your life. I have this memory, when we had to remove you from Mom's house, because she was forgetting to feed you, of you telling the staff of the group home (in a commanding voice) that you were working for the CIA. They thought that was just cute, but I knew you were telling them that you were not a person to be messed with. You were right. They didn't understand. You were epic.

I love you all, my dear beloved dead. Rest well, pray for me. See you when my time has come.

Makeover

Halloween, of course.

After an hour and 45 minute ride this morning, I was too tired to do anything really elaborate for Halloween, especially since Bernie and I had the afternoon slated for playing with hot oil and potatoes. Sounds fun, yes?

The ride was great, the horses moving briskly, engaging us riders and affording some entertainment as horse and I chased some ill-behaved and illegally loose little dogs that attempted to threaten us.

The slivers of potato I tossed into the fry oil in seconds produced some really tasty experimental potato chips, and then, with Bernie's tutelage, we made french fries, not the hit-or-miss taters that my mom occasionally tried, not the mealy mess that restaurants usually serve, but delectable treats so luscious that Lillian and a friend could not keep their hands off them, and we ended up sending them outside with a pile of them so that the friend's brothers could have a taste, too.

While I was checking email after that yummy midday meal, I found myself thinking about last Sunday's NFL game between the Washington Redskins and the Pittsburgh Steelers, and how the really ugly striped "retro" uniforms probably contributed to the Steelers' win, either because their uniforms were so ugly that the Redskins couldn't look at them without wanting to puke, or because the stripes broke up the Steelers' visual appearance so that they were hard to see, hard to identify. What would stripes do to one's face?

The first stripe, down the center of my nose, was unremarkable; two more stripes made a part of my face seem to -- disappear. Viva stripes!

Over the course of the Halloweening hours, I had many compliments from kids about my face. The best compliment was from a toddler, who waddled up to me, pacifier in his mouth, and reached out to try to grab my stripes.

I've washed them off, ready for bedtime, but I dunno ... I think I like the look.

WE WIN!!!

So we've been experimenting with cheap cuts of beef lately, because we don't have a lot of excess money. The latest experiment has been with cross-rib chuck, which at times can be on sale for $1.99 - $2.99 a pound, cheaper than hamburger.

The first cross-rib chuck roast we got was okay roasted, but a bit tough. Nevertheless, it was tasty, and at sale price, induced us to go back to the store and buy another. We figured we could always make it into chili.

Bernie, however, with his intrepid internet explorations, found a cooking method that was a bit different.

We slathered the roast (and it was insanely big, I don't know what we were thinking) with a paste of garlic and olive oil, seasoned further with salt, cumin, and black pepper. Then threw the 5+ pound thing into a 500-degree oven for 25 minutes. Then, with Bernie's through-the-door meat thermometer, cooked the roast at 250; we'd had the roast on a bed of sliced onions, and added water to a depth of 1/4 inch in the pan, basting the roast now and then with that juice, until the center measured 140 degrees.

We let it "rest" wrapped in foil for another 20 minutes.

The result: so tender you could cut the thin slices with a fork. The crust (fat side up, of course) was savory, the done-ness ... perfect. John got his "done" pieces from the ends, and Alex and I got our "rare" bits in the center. The onions were really tasty, sweet and lusciously done, and the "jus" liquid was exquisite, though the meat wasn't at all dry.

Cheap -- DELICIOUS!!!!! -- WIN!

Countin' down now, with these blog posts. Three to go for NaNoBlogMo.

This is a picture of a candle on my work table. We sit out in my garage studio sometimes at night, when the weather is clement and the wind is right, and when NFL football isn't on TV.

The candle is nestled in the curve of a broken conch shell I found on a beach on Hatteras Island, nearly thirty years ago.

I loved that place; there I could lose myself in the sound and vibration of the earth. The surf crashed when I would hit the beach at five am, and the sound sustained me, water washing around my legs as I fished, until ten, when I would break for some sort of breakfast. Then I would hurry back down to the surf, cast in, and fish until mid-day, maybe with a nap, lying in the sand. At five in the evening, I'd rejoin the family to either cook the fish I had caught, or go to dinner if I'd come up empty.

I never look at that beaten conch shell without remembering the beauty and peace of those days.

I hope Hatteras Island hasn't taken too big a beating from Hurricane Sandy.

Landmark Day

Shh! The baby is asleep!

Joan Maria fell asleep during a walk, which is no wonder, after such a monumental day.

Today, while her mother was giving her cuddles and pretend-bites, Joan emitted her first real laugh.

We'd been getting proto-chuckles this past week, little gusts of gasp-and-expulsion, in response to flurries of kisses.

Later in the day, I got a few chuckles from her by putting my lips against her ear and making buzzing noises.

Such a cheerful baby, and oh, you should see those amazingly blue eyes.

Where Did The Day Go?

Busy day.

One of the things they don't tell you about making foods fresh is how much time you can spend prepping them.

Yes, everything, for the most part, is better fresh. But fresh takes time. Today I bailed out of the horseback trail ride with glee, because I needed time to make a quart of ranch dressing, a half-pint of chimichurri, and more of my lemon chicken soup for my lunch. Add in clean-up, and laundry, and you've got your full day in.

Wait, I also took the old dog for a walk.

I got no Piker Press work done at all, which means that tomorrow, my erstwhile "Day of Rest," will be conflicted as I watch football with my laptop in my lap.

Fiddling with the Press will be more recreational than watching shitty football match-ups,  so I should be grateful.

Dead Body

Under the bright lights of my work table, I take a morgue photograph of Dragonfly, who was found dead on my husband's work bench.

Time of Death: Unknown. Bernie's work bench has been a shameful landfill since the last time he shoveled everyone else's detritus off it, which would have been about the time of our kitchen remodel (could that only have been a mere year and some ago??) -- unfortunately, the work bench is right outside the door to the garage, and whatever doesn't fit in the house ends up piled on. My work table is along the wall in another area of the garage, and since I am known to be annoyed (go freakin' ballistic) if stuff is plopped in my work area, Bernie and his bench and his mild, sweet ways get the random dumps.

Anyway, how long had Dragonfly been there? Don't know.

Cause of Death: Unknown. Aside from deterioration of the wings, which could have been caused by having detritus piled on top of the body, or battering against a solid object, the cadaver is intact. No bites have been taken out of it; no breakage of vital exoskeleton is evident. It was not, then, caught by a large praying mantis, which would have chewed the head off, or a crow, which would have eaten the whole bug.

Place of Death: Uncertain. In 15 years of residency in this house, we have never had a dragonfly zoom into the house or garage. Did Dragonfly sneak in to make his death a last statement of ferocity, so that when he was found on the workbench behind some burnt-out lightbulbs and jars of long-collected miscellaneous nails and screws, he would make the hairs on the back of Bernie's neck jump up in startlement? Or was it more likely that any ambulatory member of this family might have brought dead Dragonfly in for a closer examination on a whim, forgetting where Dragonfly's remains were temporarily interred? (I say "ambulatory" so as to completely exonerate baby Joan of any complicity in Dragonfly's demise.)

Even in death, the head and abdomen preserve a remarkable gloss, as though polished and buffed, even in this dusty clime; even after months, if not a year, the framework and seemingly fragile panes of much of the wings are intact.

If Dragonfly were a vintage car, the joints of the wings on the thorax might have been detailed and waxed at a high class car wash only hours before the discovery of his corpse.


The leading edge of the wing is reinforced, but what shall we make of that single dark pane? Identification? A distance gauge?

My father used to aggravate my mother to near apoplexy now and again, by telling her that when he died, he was going back into the earth like a dead dog, that he neither expected nor hoped for any afterlife at all. I don't actually know what he really believed, because Mom would never have tolerated an open religious discussion. The best I can do is argue with him from a distance of years ... and death ... and say, "Well, Dad, this is just a damn bug, and I still admire the life that was in it. Don't you think that I still wish I could hear you buzz and get into things and hear your crazy wild laugh?"

Dragonfly, find my dad and bite him on the nose and tell him it's from me.

Out of the Ordinary

Nothing today was out of the ordinary ... well, yes, there was one thing, but you'll have to wait to the end of this post to see what it was.

I led a ride out through the orchards -- nice, the almond harvest is done, no heavy scary machinery about to spook the horses -- and it was good. The air was cool, the sun warm. No explosive horse things.

Bernie and I occupied the kitchen after I came home, him making chicken fritters (you'll have to wait for him to blog for that recipe) and I using up some leftover ground beef to make meatballs. (For which I have no recipe, making them by eyeball and texture and smell.) We had fun, trashed the kitchen, cleaned up together, glommed on our respective culinary creations, especially junking out on his homemade pasta.

We sat outside in ideal weather until football came on ...

And then Tampa Bay beat the Vikings.

Now that was out of the ordinary.

Lemony Chicken Soup

Yesterday (Why do so many of my posts begin with "yesterday?" Sounds like a personal problem to me) I became obsessed with a recipe I looked at a couple weeks ago, involving chicken and lemon juice.

Some of the ingredients were plain old yuck, others were too much and one or two that's not enough to satisfy a gnat. So naturally I didn't follow the recipe. The results, however, were fine enough that Alex announced that she had been served her new favorite soup, and that I hadn't made enough of it to suit her. Next time, I'll remedy that. In the mean time ...

Lemon Chicken Soup

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
• 1 stalk celery, sliced thin
• 2 cloves of garlic chopped thin
• 1/2 cup chopped yellow onion
• 12 ounces boneless skinless chicken breast, cut into small chunks
• 4 cups chicken broth
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1/2 cup tiny pasta
• 3 medium mushrooms, very thinly sliced
• juice of one lemon (about 1/3 cup)

Process: Heat olive oil in a medium-sized saucepan; cook celery, garlic and onion until they are translucent. Add chicken, pepper and salt, cook through. Add broth, making sure to get any browning mixed in. Add tiny pasta; cook 8 minutes or per instructions on the pasta box. Stir in mushrooms, cook until just done. Add lemon juice and serve immediately.

This makes about four servings, unless you're Alex, in which case it makes two. We served it alongside Bernie's delectable toasted cheese sandwiches, and it made for a delicious and hearty meal.

I strongly recommend tasting the soup before the lemon juice is added, then again right after the lemon juice is added -- just for the sensory kick in the slats it affords. Wow!

Oh, the pasta. Bernie found those adorable tiny stars in the Mexican foods section of the grocery store. They were very delicate when cooked. Next time he promises he's making his own pasta ...

Yesterday I was poised to use this photo and bounce my entry off it, but one of the photos I took (in a series of seven) crashed and burned on my computer, saying that it was a file of an unknown type and couldn't be opened.

This scared me so I didn't want to even use my computer. WTF???

Once I found that my files were intact this morning, and that my computer was free of virus buggies, I thought about what I had wanted to say yesterday, and found that the picture of the eucalyptus leaves against the autumn sky was more apropos than I had thought.

I had been remembering my mother. She said, on numerous occasions, that her mother had been a great story-teller, sitting on the front stoop of their apartment building, telling tales to a small group of neighborhood kids who hung on her every word.

Hmm. What stories, Mom? What did she tell stories about?

I know she must have told stories of La Llorona, the weeping ghost seeking her drowned kids, because my mother told it to me. What hispanic kid never shivered in the night, hearing crying sounds on the air, wondering if La Llorona was coming to claim them to replace her dead children?

But.

How many Mexican kids were in that tenement block in Bethlehem, PA, in the 1930s, to cluster around to listen to Josefa Palos tell stories? My mother never mentioned any other Mexican families living there. Mom mentioned Irish and Slovak families, racial epithets tossed as the immigrants sought a balance and foothold in America. But not other Mexicans. How could my grandmother have garnered an audience of non-hispanics, when she didn't speak English?

I know she didn't, because we (very infrequently) visited Uncle Buddy's house, where resided my uncle and Aunt Lucy, three of my cousins, and my grandmother Palos. She did not speak to me or to my sister, or my father; she spoke only to my mother, in low, nearly-whispered tones, in Spanish.

My mother claimed all her lucid life that she learned Spanish in school, because her mother insisted that she and her brothers all spoke English exclusively, to moor them in the country they had been brought to.

I studied enough of language and linguistics to know that was a lie, because even when my mother's mind began to fail, she was fluent in Spanish. In my high school years, she would not speak Spanish to me, saying that I had the accent of a Cuban. I took four years of Spanish in high school, acing every class, and another class or two in college, having exempted out of all the basic courses. Yet by the time I was twenty-five, disuse had paralyzed my ability to communicate in that language. Mom's disuse had no affect on her, ever. She was a native speaker.

See those chewed-up leaves on the tree? Our memories are subject to chewing, the mandibles of regret and remorse and denial munching up the files of what we think we remember. The leaves on that eucalyptus tree don't remember the leaf-cutter bees that snipped at them to make their nests; by and large, most of us have missing chunks of our memories that we don't know are gone, and sometimes, even when we have a visceral knowledge that they are gone, our mighty intellects furnish an alternative memory that seems to make sense.

Some day, I hope to actually meet my grandmother, and give her huge hugs, and jangle all her stories from her, unhindered by language. She will probably think that I am a pest, but then we will mount our horses, she upon her horse Liston, I upon Crow, and we will ride off on the hillsides to gossip about my mother's weirdness, and bridge the long chasm between our lives.

Golden Season

At this time of year, except for the dust in the air from the almond harvesting, California is so beautiful that I almost feel guilty for living here.

The depth of blue in the sky, the cool sweetness of the fall breeze, the still-warm sun sliding in low-angled beams that enhance the colors of every flower and lawn -- I can't think of any other place I'd rather be.

These are flowers of a palm tree. I think the golden and deep blue sum up the flavor of the season.

Yesterday morning, the marine layer (fog-like clouds) came in all the way from the Bay Area into the Valley, making Ripon look more like Santa Cruz in the morning. We pretended that we were in Santa Cruz again, having breakfast at Gilda's on the pier (we were really in my garage studio with the door open to the gray sky) and a bit later, we pretended to take a walk along West Cliff Drive in Santa Cruz. (This time we were on Ripon's beautiful bike trail with its dwarf bottlebrush bushes, society garlic, and sycamore plantings.) By the time we returned to the house, the marine layer was burning off in spots, revealing a brilliant blue sky.

By mid-day, the sun was shining brightly; by nightfall, the air was clement enough to allow us to sit out in the open studio again, with candles and drinks and our dog keeping watch beside us.

Yeah. Guilty. Riiiiiggghhhht.

A New Dog?

Yesterday was warm, nearly 85 degrees. We decided that Howie needed a bath.

I wanted to give him a bath on a warm day because I had started to become concerned about his health. He is, after all, eleven years old, and I know our time left with him is short. His normally soft and lustrous fur was looking grayish, and felt coarse to the touch -- not Howie-pelt.  I pulled out a big galvanized tub, and filled it with warm water from my bathtub. If Howie was starting to get ill, the last thing he'd need is cold water.

He played in the hose until he was soaked, then obligingly lay down and stretched out while we soaped him and massaged him, one side and then the other.

Handfuls of hair came loose as we lathered him.

The big tub of warm water we used to rinse him off, then let him play in the spray of the hose for a few minutes. When we rubbed him semi-dry with towels, another raft of hair came loose on the nap. A walk around the block was in order in the hot sun so that he could dry a bit better.

He looked horrible, like a walking example of terminal mange. Some of his fur was still lying flat, many tufts stood out, gray and matted from the scrubbing.

Brush time.

A large-tined brush broke up the worst of the mats; a rake loosened some of the undercoat that was thick and slowly coming loose. A slicker brush picked up the hair, over and over again ... Something like a bushel basket of fur was shed off the dog, leaving behind a clean striped coat.

Now to be fair to us, Bernie and I both had at Howie with brushes a few days before, and got a huge pile of hair off him. And I'd done it a week before, combing out another mountain of hair.

The warm and soothing bath blew that dog's undercoat right off his skin.

Today his fur is silky and shining, soft and sweet-smelling (and I don't mean perfumed.) Nothing about that gorgeous striped coat says "Old dog" or "Ailing dog."

Nothing like a warm bath at the end of summer's undercoat season.

Anothers Weirdos!

This is a Western race fox sparrow.

He distracted us while we were supposed to be preparing breakfast; never having seen this bird before, we were glued to the windows, trying to figure out who he was.

Not only did this bird's visit to our back patio make this a memorable date, but also, in the late evening, after sundown, Bernie and I were sitting in the garage (the garage door open) and saw a fireball race across the sky, golden tail and red sparks and bluish tints around the white-gold center. Wow! Never seen anything like that before in my life.

It exploded and burnt out before it hit the ground, as far as we know.

Wow.

Wow.

Nice, memorable day.