What I Did on My Summer Vacation

 

Last spring, I was cleaning up the recordings on the cable DVR (?) and I found a new recording of a horse race that I didn't know was there. When I viewed the details, I discovered that one of the sports channels was covering horse races.

This is unusual, because horse races are among the most obscure of sports on TV, and I rarely get to see more than the Triple Crown (Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, and Belmont Stakes). But this year, of course, thanks to COVID-19, sports were kind of shut down -- except for a couple tracks where the managers had their ducks in a row, had quarantined the hell out of everyone, had stringent rules about who could or couldn't set foot on the premises, and so the horse races at Oaklawn Park in Arkansas and the Tampa Bay Downs were being televised. Run without fans in the stands, but running races nonetheless. I began spending my Saturdays watching horse races.

By the end of April, I'd had about enough of television and internet news. Everything revolved around the corona virus. Close it all down! Open it all up! Make kids go back to school in the summer to catch them up! I have a right to open my business! Masks make you smother! It's a pandemic! It's a hoax! On and on with the self-righteousness and accusations and worldwide protests, why isn't someone saving us from this disease? Why are you making us suffer by 'sheltering in place'? I have a right to party! Don't we have a right to health care? 

The race season shifted to Belmont Park in New York, where they put the proper protocols in place to allow racing again. I've always loved the big, sweeping track there, so I began to watch that track on the weekends. Then the reporting team said that when the Belmont meet was done, they were going to Saratoga, and that the channel would carry ALL the Saratoga races.

That was that. I let the family know I was heading off to Saratoga Springs, the oldest and arguably most beautiful track in the USA. On Mondays and Tuesdays, I'd feverishly catch up on all the in-house chores I had to do, and then Wednesday through Sunday mornings, off to Saratoga by 10am and stay there until the last race was done, studying my racing forms, listening to the racetrack team chatter about bloodlines and past performances, history of racing, tack and horseshoes, condition and temperament, jockeys' riding abilities and the strengths and weaknesses of trainers, the hopes of owners, the eerie feeling of the big track without spectators.

I don't have a 'bucket list.' And even if I did, it wouldn't have had on it Go to Saratoga Springs for the Entire Race Meet, because that wouldn't have been possible. I never thought in my life, that I would be able to spend a season at Saratoga. That was a luxury beyond my imagination.

But this summer, I was there. And it was wonderful. I've now done something I never thought I could do.

A stack of racing forms sits beside my work desk, shrouded by a dust cover to keep the ash and harvest dust off it. On the forms are scribbles of notes, names of horse sires circled, names of really proficient jockeys and trainers underlined, what the track was like that day. Maybe this winter, when the rain and wind rattle the door of my garage studio, I'll pull the stack out and look through it, day by day, and remember the shadows of the trees on the track for the late afternoon races, and smile.

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.

What You Can Do While Watching Horse Races All Day

This coming weekend should have been Kentucky Derby day, but it won't be, thanks to the pandemic. Most horse racing venues have been closed down to halt contagion, so all the prep races for the Kentucky Derby were cancelled, also. Only a couple tracks stayed open, and Fox Sports 1 has been having horse races televised from Oaklawn Track in Arkansas, and Tampa Bay Downs in Florida. And since the only prep race for the Kentucky Derby still open happens to be the Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn, I've been watching horse races on the weekends -- bingeing, so to speak, from 10:30 am until 4 pm.

Yesterday was a beautiful day, and since I was going to watch horse-racing in front of the TV in my studio, I cleared a spot on the work table and indulged my latest craze: cadmium red oil paint. Same palette as the last painting, but I added a little touch of ultramarine blue and the very slightest pinch of alizarin crimson.

Enjoyed the races, loved seeing the paint go down onto the canvas in rich swathes.

Sheltering in Place (SIP) and Painting Party

Last evening, Alex caught me during a suggestible moment and invited me to a Painting Event with her and her daughters. "We can drink wine and paint," she said. "Come on, it will be fun."

I knew they would be doing watercolors and acrylics. "Do you mind if I use oils?" They didn't mind at all, and so this afternoon, I hoicked myself off to the studio to join them, cleaned my filthy work table, and set out a palette of cobalt blue, cadmium red light, cadmium red medium, cadmium yellow medium, and titanium white.

"The theme is 'cactus,'" I was told. Fine. Cactus it is. Howabout cactus in Red Rock Country?

Oh, yes, and every time I accidentally got my hand in my oil paint, we had a ... sip. (*SIP*) This made for a very agreeable afternoon, and since we were in the garage studio, my solvents and paints did not bother anyone at all. This is the result:

 

The Simplest Seder

Normally, we'd sit Seder on the Saturday before Passion Sunday, since the readings for Passion Sunday include Jesus at "The Last Supper" -- which was the Passover meal, that is, a Seder.

Normally, we'd have table friends (haverim) from some of the past 20 years of Seders, new friends, neighbors, guests of former guests gathered around tables in the big front room, for Seders that would begin at 7pm and last until 10pm, with plenty of time after for more wine and conversation.

Normally, I'd begin the day of Seder going to the party rental place for chairs and place-settings, and to Trader Joe's for fresh flowers to arrange for the table.

And normally, after Seder, I'd see the guests off, send the family to bed, and spend slow, quiet, beautiful time putting things away in their rental crates and our things in the dishwasher, getting food into the fridge, pushing the tablecloths into the washer, having a last glass of wine, and remembering the evening.

Not this year, of course. The pandemic has us all locked down, so to speak, so no Seder.

Or so I thought.

We'd decided to roast a lamb shoulder in honor of Passover (which began last night), and eat it with flat breads (basically gorditas) and tzatziki (cucumber and Greek yogurt) and goat cheese spiced with chili-garlic sauce. But before we could begin the meal, Bernie showed up with pages of paper -- printouts of the shortest Seder haggadah I've ever seen. He collected our song books and wine glasses from the Seder basket on the shelf. At that point, Joma screeched, "Are we doing SEDER???" in an ecstasy of delight.

Well, I guess, of course we were.

An emergency candle holder took the place of the usual crystal ones, and Joma picked snapdragons and nasturtiums for the table flowers. Alex lit the candle to start; I was crying too much to be the Table Mother this year. Lillian read the haggadah, the story of the salvation of the Israelites, by God, led by Moses, out of Egypt.

We sang, and raised our glasses of wine, and then had a delicious meal of some of the best lamb I've ever made. Then we concluded the Seder with more song, more wine, and the silly rendition of "Who Knows One?" (That'll be for a later post.) I cried a lot more.

Because I miss the haverim.
Because I miss the preparation and the participation and the peaceful quiet and perfume of the house afterwards.
Because Seder is always good.
That's why I cried, for longing and for joy.

Lillian took care of the clean-up afterwards; this was the first Seder that she was allowed to have wine instead of grape juice, and ya gotta step up when your grandmother is dripping tears. Bernie and I went out to the garage studio and watched the clouds and passers-by until the sun went down.

This morning I got up before it was light enough out for me to see the clock (to take Kermit out) and saw the remains of the Seder on the table, wine and flowers and candlestick.

I am content, and God is good.

First Sunday in April

A Sunday without Mass would feel pretty barren.

Our bishop, Bishop Myron Cotta, was one of many bishops in the world to give his diocese a dispensation from the obligation to attend Mass, to stop the spread of (specifically) the corona virus.

Fortunately there is technology abounding, and we are able to "attend" Mass by watching a televised service.

Doing so is simply a matter of choice. Since Bishop Cotta gave us the dispensation, we wouldn't have to worry about it, and don't have to even think about it if we don't want to. But I've come to find consolation in the Liturgy; it is prayer, a way of bringing me to accept the contact of the God Who created me. It's a prayer that's been going on for over two thousand years, and each time I experience it, my heart can renounce time and space and be a part of the Sacrifice that happened once, for all, for all time -- like tips of lightning bolts that spread across the sky, all part of the same electrical discharge. Mass is all one thing, no matter where, no matter when. I like that feeling of unity, a unity that is completely about love.

What does that have to do with the flower in the picture?

Not a lot, unless you look for God in all things, and that the Liturgy and the tulip -- no kidding, it really is a tulip -- are both beautiful, and allow me to be lost in wonder in a world that some would like to paint as terrifying and heart-crushing, either because they have been indoctrinated to fear and avoid the world, or to improve their ratings.

And now I must encourage myself to see God in the rain outside that unseasonably is keeping me inside the house when I would rather be outside slobbering over my little tomato plants like an obsessive mother. Thank you, God, for the rain.

And Yet Good Things, Too

Kermit doesn't care about corona virus. He cares about getting his food on time, sleeping close against my legs, and about those darned cats that keep using our fence as a path, which is what he's watching for in this picture.

I'm trying to let him be my teacher in this. Yesterday we went out to see if we could buy some potatoes (we were out) and there were simply none to be had. But there were still plenty of people piling shopping carts high with anything they could grab. It made me cry, right there in the store, that people -- in whom I have faith that they can be good -- would continue to be so selfish and amoral in the face of a crisis. My sadness discolored almost my whole day ... then we got a text from Alex that said that the transplant center was releasing John to come home to recuperate the rest of the way.

They were home safe and sound by the time we awoke this morning, and it was a joyous and festive kind of day. Yes, we're all prohibited from having guests in the house, or visiting other people's houses, but except for Joma, we're all heavily on the hermit side of social, so that's not a hardship. John looks great after his kidney transplant, and Alex, Lil, and I had fun planning a schedule that will keep us active and productive.

We made a monumental feast of Mexican rice and frijoles refritos; tacos with home-made tortillas. After the meal, Bernie and I went to Ripon's excellent bike and hike path and walked together, admiring the trees blossoming and the geese ambling about. We were surprised by how many people -- families -- were there, too, walking, biking, exercising their dogs. This is not a time to go to a movie theater, and with so many folks working (or not working) from home, what do you do? You get out in the open air and see the sun splashing through the fluffy clouds and hear the voices and laughter of people.

Maybe not such dire straits on all levels.

Bernie split some kindling for tomorrow's fire, and found a little sagebrush lizard torpid on top of a log. He picked it up in his work glove, and we all got a chance to admire the tiny creature close up.

Oh, yes, the girls' schools closed after classes on Friday, not due to reopen until mid-April (ha, ha, so they say officially) and so Joma and I began working on the Forbidden Basics: Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. Our text for reading is a big book of Dr. Seuss books, and we're starting with classic "1 + 1 = 2" etc. Which she has never experienced, recitation and memorization not being in style with teaching methods these days. A couple hours ago, I heard her chanting the numbers to herself.

I think, if I live through it, I will see this as more of a time of promise than of curse.

I wanted something beautiful to accompany this post, because otherwise I might begin to despair over how awful people can be. This is my plum tree on the back patio, in the sweet light of morning.

We went to the grocery store two days ago. We needed a couple baguettes, some dog food, angel hair pasta, a white onion, a yellow onion, and strawberries, which were on sale. The first clue that something was off was that there were hardly any shopping carts available.

Now I have seen pictures of empty shelves in supermarkets, usually when there is a major weather event brewing, but until Friday, I had never seen panic-shopping in person. The store was crowded, and people's carts were all piled high. I mean HIGH. We stuck to the outskirts of the store, mostly, because people were rude, pushy, determined, with pinched faces that fiercely ignored the others around them, and gave the impression that if you looked in their carts too hard, you would get punched in the face.

There was no water on the shelves. No toilet paper at all, not even the cheap stuff. No paper towels. I had wondered, as we entered the store, why an older woman in heels and a suit was buying so many boxes of tissues and -- napkins! Signs on the shelves informed shoppers that they would be limited to six items of cleaning supplies, and two bags of ice only per shopper.

As I reached for a package of angel hair pasta, a fat hairy man reached past my ear and started grabbing bags of pasta and tossing them into his nearly full cart. On another aisle, Bernie pulled me out of the way of a woman who was trying to push past me and who would have almost certainly run over my flip-flop-clad feet. Feeling a bit overwhelmed, I saw the fat hairy man meet up with his wife, who also had a heaped-full cart of her own. What they were hauling would be enough to feed them for six months, I think.

The pheromonal stench of panic was horrible. I wanted to get out of the store as soon as I could, before I caught the mob mania and started grabbing things -- any things -- off the shelves.

Quick! Time for something else that is beautiful before I begin to cry.

 Almond blossoms! Yes, remember how lovely they were, and how their perfume filled the air, and how I could stand in the spaces between the branches and listen to the myriad of bees buzzing around the flowers.

The corona virus is bad, no doubt about that. But only a few weeks ago, fully a THIRD of the students at Joma's school were out sick with some kind of cough and fever that knocked Joma off her little rocker for well over a week. No one rushed out and bought up all the cough syrup and Clorox over it. NO ONE in this town has COVID19, and what will buying and hoarding toilet paper help them with if they pick it up somewhere else?

I guess what makes me really sad is that this little town is one of the most affluent in the Central Valley. There's no need for anyone to hoard anything. But there you have it, they are. Today Bernie and Joma went to the store for parmesan cheese (Lillian is cooking stuffed shells for dinner tomorrow) and Bern reported that there has now been a run on meat and cheese, almost none to be had. (The shaved parmesan that Lil wanted was in good supply -- must be too weird for people to know what to do with it.) I sort of understand about buying meat in bulk, but cheese? It doesn't freeze well ... and I know maybe four or five folks who actually DO know how to cook, but for the most part, the general populace here doesn't.

After the bout in the grocery store, I was not at all surprised to hear that both the girls' schools were closing for three to four weeks. Or that our diocesan bishop dispensed with the requirement of going to Mass on Sundays until this virus blows over.

And until the panic does, too.

Four Tasks at Once

The nice woodstove does a few things well.

First of all, it heats the whole house. Secondly, it dries the kitchen dish towels in a matter of minutes. Third, it keeps a dog warm -- or a person, if the person is quick enough to get to the chair before the dog does. And fourth, it saves electricity by cooking my onions and celery for my Chicken Stuff dressing. (If you could peek into that pot, you'd see the celery and onion simmering away.)

Let's add a fifth: it's beautiful and comforting to look at.

The Tale of Woe

August: Joma brings home the flu to Bernie and me, possibly from some germy little hog on the soccer team. My dog Kermit starts rubbing his eyes and muzzle -- lots of wildfire smoke in the air, so probably a reaction to that.

September: Recovering, lots of coughing for us, more rubbing by Kermit, still so much smoke.

October: Alex's health is getting bad enough she has to quit working.  Kermit is losing weight and his coat feels dry and dirty.

November: Kermit takes an extreme turn for the worse, stops eating, loses 20 pounds and looks like a fur-covered skeleton. Alex has surgery to correct her health problems. By November 10th, I quit NaNoWriMo because I fear my dog is dying.

December: Kermit appears to be on the mend after we nearly had him put down -- he couldn't walk without crying with pain, wouldn't eat. Bernie has surgery scheduled to correct a scar tissue problem from an operation 44 years ago, but halfway through the surgery, the doctors see something in his monitors that makes them fear a heart attack, and he is admitted to the hospital (it was supposed to be a 3-hour in-and-out thing) for three days for test upon test on his heart.

Christmas: Bernie has a clean bill of health for his heart, his surgery was quite successful, and I know from the medical tests that he doesn't have the same heart condition that killed his two brothers in the last three years. Kermit looks good again, putting on weight, his coat soft and glossy.

Goodbye, 2019.

National Novel Writing Month 2019

I'm not really sure why, really, I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year. I don't have the time to do it, practically speaking, but here I am, on Day 5, with a respectable word count of 9214. I was hoping for 10k, but was easily distracted today by laundry, and an absurd desire to maintain some kind of timeline consistency.

I doubt that any of what I'm writing will be usable in a new novel; maybe some, maybe not any of it. What I do know is that since I started writing again, nightmares have stopped completely. A month of no bad dreams is worth the time eaten up by writing. It's like having a vacation.

The lizard above is one of the MANY we have on the property now. I'm thrilled that the sagebrush lizard population has boomed. They eat ants, says the Internet. Indeed, I am not seeing the swarms of megacolonies of ants that I did a few years ago.

With the time passing into November coolness, the lizards have to sleep most of the time. I get to see them if I head outside around noon, but before that, and after two-thirty or so, it's just too cold for them. Kind of like me, and writing out in the studio.

Liz is saying, "Hey, why does it get so cold when you write?"

Finished Paintings

You know, I can't remember when I started these pictures. It was so long ago that I found them under a pile of papers, having forgotten about them. As I set them out on a work table, I thought "Geeze, why was I so timid about this?"

The limited palette I'd chosen (good thing I wrote it down in a project notebook I found with the preliminary paintings) was Titanium White, Cadmium Orange Medium, Naples Yellow, Alizarin Crimson, and Burnt Sienna.

The inspiration for them was a piece of seashell that I carried with me for a while, calling it a "worry-stone" -- I could find it in a pocket or on my desk and fiddle with it. Turning the shell-shard, I found the lines making strange scenes.

In the third one (on the right) imagine the lines to be stars. I'm pleased with the resulting images, and we're already trying to figure out where to hang them once they are dry.

LG LRE3083SW Range -- Goodbye and Good Riddance

It had a pretty blue enamel interior.
It had a convection oven function.
Mmm, it had a smooth ceramic top.
Self-cleaning.
Warming center on the top.
It was on sale.

Yes, I bought it, and thought it would be the last range I'd ever have to buy, so lovely to look at and play with that it was a trophy stove for my kitchen, even though I do tend to sneer when people make trophy alliances or buy trophy homes or cars.

Serves me right, I guess. The first time I used the self-cleaning function, it did a really crappy job. I mean REALLY. So much so that I went to the store to buy oven cleaner, only to find that you may not use oven cleaner on convection ovens. I was not pleased to discover I'd have to live with a dirty-looking oven. But surely, the industry of oven cleaners would evolve to come up with a solution, sooner or later.

Last spring, we began hearing groaning noises coming from the stove when we used the oven. Intrepidly, Bernie researched and found it it was because the convection fan in the oven was giving out. Repair would be fairly inexpensive, and relatively easy ... so we'd deal with that when we had to.

Labor Day Weekend; a family meal, a big batch of delicious breaded pork chops with mashed potatoes and gravy, and vine-ripened tomatoes and corn on the cob ... WTF, the front burner stopped working and now my chops were sitting in oil instead of frying in oil! Switch to another burner, salvage the rest of the meal, dangit. Well, those burners can be replaced, a bit of a tricky job, true, but not impossible.

The next morning, I turned on the back burner to heat water for my tea. It came on, but so did the big front burner, without me touching its controls. What if I had been using that front burner area like an extra bit of countertop? After all, that's the main reason I like flat ceramic tops, because they can function as additional serving space or work area.

After researching, Bernie found that the likely source of the problem was the control panel. Seriously? For a barely three year old stove?

About $250 for the part alone, not counting the cost of service call and labor if it turned out to be a repair he couldn't do himself.


My turn to do some Googling of stoves. I found a plain old damn electric range at Lowe's for $350, although it wasn't in stock and would take some weeks to get here.

Next best option: get the model that simply upgrades to a self-cleaning oven. $450. In stock. And when we went to look at it, and subsequently buy it, we got $100 off by opening a Lowe's account, which costs us nothing. And there it is, tucked into its spot, looking like it belongs to the kitchen and the dark granite countertops.

It's pretty.
The burners heat up really, really fast.
The controls are simple.
The oven is WAY more even for baking (Bernie made some outstanding zucchini bread)
The oven pre-heats a lot faster.
The burners' temperatures don't fluctuate.

The LG ceramic top stove was probably never meant to be used by people who cook as much as we do. I needed a workhorse, not My Pretty Pony.

I think I've got it.

Gulf Fritillary in Our Garden

Bernie called me out to the front garden to look at a butterfly he'd never seen before. I hadn't, either, so off to Google Search we went. This is a Gulf Fritillary, usually not seen this far north. But apparently they have been in the Bay Area in ages past, and recently have founded a colony in Sacramento County. Simply beautiful.

Bean Therapy in the 2019 Summer Garden

This has been a year of exploration of peppers, which I never bothered to grow since back in the day when my mother and I would plant tomatoes and peppers to make our own salsa casera. After I moved to California in 1988, I had no need to plant peppers and make the cooking sauce; out here EVERY supermarket has it, unlike rural Pennsylvania.

Last summer I began using peppers in my minestrone recipe, and found that they had become indispensable in my cooking. Box 7 became my pepper nursery, with Anaheim chilis and Italian White Wax peppers. And what the heck, why not plant a pepperoncini and a bell pepper as well?

Having no room set aside for the last two, I just jammed them in with my first planting of wax beans, which I'd started too early and looked like lame weeds. To my surprise, two weeks later, the wax beans had begun to leaf out like crazy, and the bell pepper and the pepperoncini were enormous and covered with blooms, while the Anaheims and Italian White Waxes were less than half the size.

Whaaat? Beans and peppers like each other?

Now back to tomatoes -- which I love like a crazy old cat lady loves kittens. This has been a crummy tomato year in the Pilarski Farmland. Seemed like every time the plants had a wave of flowers, the temperature went over a hundred, which shriveled the buds. And the first nine Shady Lady plants I put in ... they were not thriving. Since peppers and tomatoes are both from the same family, I began planting bean seeds in with the sad tomatoes.

And seeing how pathetic this year's tomatoes were, Bernie told me to go buy more plants, three more Shady Ladies, which I planted into the new bed with beans, not waiting around to see if they needed beanie buddies. This is Box 10, tomatoes planted with beans:

With Beans

You can't even see the beans in there, except on the edges. But boy oh boy, those tomatoes know the nitrogen-fixing beans are partying right along with them.

And then, this poor trio, which were the first plants this spring:

No beans

Admittedly, they're all husky plants, that's why Shady Lady is my go-to producer. But wow, what a difference. Same light, same watering system, same potting soil, same number of plants, same size box. Beans made a huge difference.

Next year, with bean buddies from the beginning, we'll be planting Anaheims again, as they are delicious in a number of dishes, and of course, jalapenos and a bell or two, but the Italian White Wax -- turned out to be so hot that when Bernie nibbled one, I thought he was going to pick up a frying pan and smite himself with it to put himself out of his misery.

They are now compost.

Look at What I Can Do!

I was cleaning up my various email inboxes and came across some Photoshop tutorials that I'd signed up to receive, and of course never looked at because I have no time (sarcasm) to learn anything new. One caught my eye, about being able to use text to reveal an image. I clicked on it, fully expecting jargon I would not understand about functions of Photoshop that don't exist on my ancient version of the program, Photoshop 7. (I have a couple books on how to use Photoshop 7 and can't seem to get through a single chapter without becoming annoyingly confused.)

"HAH!" is what I said when I pressed Ctrl + Alt + G -- and the image you see appeared, with the text revealing the image. I felt like I had just reached into my top hat pulled out a rabbit smoking a cigar. And it was so easy. I made a new file image and filled it with black, put text on a new layer, made another new layer, and pasted the image on it. Then the Ctrl + Alt + G thing ... presto!

The image revealed by the text is of the tomatoes sitting on the counter waiting for someone to eat them. We've had sliced tomatoes, tomato and cucumber sandwiches, salsa, tomato-onion-garlic-basil on pasta, salads with tomato, and we love them all. In fact, I'm going to go pick some more tomatoes right now. Day before yesterday, the total was 21 pounds 5 ounces.

I love tomato season.

Update: After picking the tomatoes, the season harvest so far weighs in at 29 pounds 4 ounces.

Computer User

There he naps, in his sunbeam.

I got a surprise the other evening when I was fiddling with my computer, and Kermit came by to see what I was doing. Suddenly a new window opened, with an advertisement for cat food.

Kermit had seen the image of the cat in the ad on the sidebar of the site I was perusing, and poked it with his nose.

Touchscreen computer = dog friendly. Good thing I wasn't on Amazon.

Yet Another Amenity

A redwood deck in the front yard, nestled among the young podocarpus trees and Swiss chard, seats four comfortably, free wi-fi, pets okay.

Had To Experience It For Myself To Believe It

I'm not a bad housekeeper.

Too true that I'm not good at washing windows, and I don't stress out over dog hair (as long as it isn't in my food or my sheets), but no visitor is going to wind up with food poisoning from a dirty kitchen, or sustain major injuries tripping over stuff left on the floor. But ...

We got the interior of the house painted this past year, and had scrumptious carpeting put down in the bedrooms and hallway, and as a result, I had to delve into closets and corners and clean up enough for work to proceed. More than once I had to say to myself, Good grief, how long has that been in there?

Also in the past year, Bernie found an article on the web that talked about this Japanese woman, Marie Kondo, who specialized in teaching people how to "tidy up." There was a book by her:


 ... and so we ordered it from the library and read it. Most of it, anyway.

The result was that Bernie and I cut the amount of clothing in our closets by more than half. The process was easy -- take every article of clothing out of the closet and pile it on the bed. Then pick up each piece and ask yourself,  Do I love it? Really love it? If yes, then it goes back in the closet. If not, it goes, to trash or donation bag.

A couple days ago, Bernie and I found a Netflix series on the same subject, and since, having cleaned our closets, we felt like experts, we condescendingly decided to watch it.

The 40 minute show took us nearly two hours to watch, as it sparked so much conversation about how we do things and think about our household. Yow.

One of the bits that I hadn't read in the book was about arranging drawers in baths, bedrooms, and kitchens. "Stay out of my drawers" was a statement my mother taught me from childhood. However, watching the TV series, I realized that I had not only underestimated the importance of drawers and organization, I had missed out most of my life a truly lovely and uplifting -- prayer-like -- experience of bringing order and finding joy in it.

I'm not going to show a picture of my lingerie drawer, but it turned out great;  the kitchen drawer that houses dishcloths, dish towels, potholders, and a couple miscellaneous things, and that USED TO BE a veritable rats-nest of tangled fabric and buried kitchen linens now looks like this:

This thing was overflowing when I unloaded it onto the counter. I threw nothing out, but now, orderly, there is room to spare and I can see at a glance what all is in there.

The handling and folding of the individual pieces was the most surprising part of it. In taking time to do so in a certain pattern allowed me to appreciate each towel, respecting its nature and its purpose.

 And oddly enough, I think that the process has made me a better woman.

The Wild Tree

My little almond tree on the north side of the house has clusters of beautiful blossoms. Last year it had only two, and they were pretty ratty-looking. This spring, the tree had a better idea of what to do.

Perfectly placed, the tree is not too close to the fence, and Joma can see it from her bedroom window. The scrub jay who planted it did a great job.