Seasons and people change.

Well, I’m pleased to report that the crape myrtle finally grew some leaves. Thank you for joining us, crape myrtle.

Last night we watched The Hurt Locker. It was good–I guess because of all the hype, I kind of expected it to blow my mind. It didn’t, exactly, but I must say that it has stayed with me. Especially the ending. I feel like I have so many good movies to catch up on.

I did indeed spend the whole weekend writing, except when I was watching a movie and ordering a pair of boots online. I have to tell you, the worst thing I ever did was memorize my debit card number. Now there is absolutely nothing standing between me, my poor impulse control, and the enticing world of internet shopping. I also bought some earrings this weekend. Because of the poor impulse control thing. The way I justify it is thusly: if I had lots of free time, I would go either/both to Target and to the fabric store, where I would surely end up spending three times what I spend by sitting at home and shopping online. Plus, free shipping on the boots! That makes them practically free.

Kind of.

Anyway, happy Monday! Guess what I’m doing today? Did you say writing? You’re so right!

But very quickly, before all that starts up, I want to mention something that has caught my attention lately.

See, I grew up in South Florida. Not only that, but I grew up sort of emo in South Florida. (Only sort of–I was like the really happy emo girl.) And I was very pale, which in the early 1990s meant you were either (1) sick, (2) a vampire (and this was well before they were cool), or (3) a hopeless dork. In middle school, I was already considered a hopeless dork, so no biggie. But when I got to high school, where people were nice, I decided to make the slight transition toward vampire. I dressed as if being touched by the sun would scar me for life–long-sleeved turtlenecks, jeans, long peasant dresses with long-sleeved flannel shirts over them, black tights, etc. For a period of time, I was actually too self-conscious about my pallor to let people see my arms.

(I eventually got over that, but it was years–probably close to a decade–before I let my legs be seen in public.)

I distinctly remember making the 1.5 mile trek home from the bus stop in the middle of a July day (like all good vampires, I volunteered at the summer school program), wearing jeans and a turtleneck.

My point is, I can’t stand hot weather. Ever since then, I have this weird conception of the year–like that it starts in October and ends in late May, and everything from June to September is wasteland. It’s a revulsion on a gut level. And when October does arrive, I get this feeling of overwhelming relief, like, “I made it!”

This is not an entirely desirable way to be. First off, I live in the desert, where summer can start in late April and last into November. Second off, life is too short to dread half of it. What can be done?

I’ll give you a little spoiler: I’m not dreading the warm weather this year.

We live in a house built into the downslope of a north-facing hill. This means that from November through March, our entire backyard and much of the house itself get very little sunshine. I don’t remember ever in my life noticing the change of seasons, the change in the position of the sun, until I moved to this house. Now I feel the seasons and the sunlight all tied up together, like a rhythm–like the rhythm that they are.

Anyway, if there is sun to be had, the upstairs of the house gets it. The downstairs does not. As a result, the downstairs is consistently 10-15 degrees cooler than the upper floor. This is wonderful in the summer, but in the winter it can get a little extreme.

My office is downstairs. What this means is that I spend several months a year freezing my patootie off. To avoid this, I use a space heater and wear socks and a sweater and often wear a blanket on my lap like a granny (or a baby).

Well guess what?

I’m sick of it!

I’m sick of bundling up every day and then taking the dog outside to find it’s 82 degrees. I’m sick of not being able to wear my cute dresses and skirts without fear of freezing to death. I’m sick of running multiple space heaters at once, risking overloading the circuit and losing all my unsaved work.

So this year, as the sun creeps back northward, I watch it set first in the kitchen window, then behind the wall, then in the dining room window, knowing that this means that the temps are rising and soon it will be a dusty, hot, southern California summer. Where a day that tops out at 95 degrees will be a cool treat. Where I will switch my space heaters for fans.

Where I can work downstairs in comfort! Where I can wear my cute clothes and not worry about layering!

Spring is here! Summer is coming! And for the first time I can remember, I’m glad of it.

Happy Monday.

k.

6 comments March 29th, 2010

The author will now look around.

My desk faces the yard, and over the past few weeks, my view has been considerably brightened by the blooming of the peach blossoms. I felt inspired to take a picture and share it, and then I figured, why not take a walk around and see what catches my eye?

First, my little peach tree. No fuzzy infant peaches yet, but I’ve seen the bees a-buzzin’, so here’s hoping…

Aren’t the flowers gorgeous? So delicate!

From the looks of the dwarf orange tree, it’s going to be a bumper crop:

The sad ivy bed, which I’m try to coax back to life after it got tented along with the house in July:

The french lavender, which decided all by itself that it belonged in our yard and has proceeded to thrive (voulez-vous fleurir avec moi?):

Strange little leaves on stilts!

The shady side of the yard:

Vs. the sunny side of the yard:

Beloved old oak canopy:

Red berries untouched by the cedar waxwings:

Cunning little pink flowers (this is called “pink clover”… it found its own way in):

This picture shows the retaining wall Winston jumped off of as well as the cement planter border he landed on (face first) back on July 4, 2008… a day that will live on in infamy, a bad dog back, and vet bills:

Neglected pepper plant continues, without human interference, to bless us with its horrible hot peppers (the husb rather likes them):

Sweet winding vine! Self-taught.

Naughty gopher! Wishing I hadn’t scared you away when the neighbor tried to dispatch you:

Dozens, maybe hundreds, of the most vile-tasting oranges ever conceived of:

The windchime is broken, but it still smiles (and chimes):

I’m starting to worry that the crape myrtle isn’t going to come back from winter! Grow some leaves, already!

Upstairs we have the succulent garden. The spiky plant which is on the left and in the middle amuses me to no end, because the one in the middle is actually a shoot from the main plant that decided it would prefer to run away from home:

And, lastly, Winston. Because no post about anything is complete without him. In the first picture, I thought he was just doing the Cavalier ‘tude thing with the nose in the air. Then I realized he was mad at the little reflection cast around the ceiling by my phone.

Cheers, all! Happy Thursday night (or Friday morning, as the case may be)… (try as I might, I can’t break this text off into its own paragraph. Just as well that we’ve reached the end, I guess.)

k.

5 comments March 18th, 2010

The faux-tao of worming.

I picked up a worm this morning–bare-handed! This is huge, because even though I adore my worms and devote many hours to finding them and feeding them and maintaining their expensive worm habitat, I am still afraid of the buggers and have to wear gloves to actually touch them.

But this morning, as I was walking Winston, I saw a red wiggler right in the street, which is a Very Bad Place for a worm to be. The sun was about to pop out, which is a Very Bad Situation for a worm. So what did I do? I scooped him up! Well, I tried to scoop him up. I sort of prodded him, and then he was like, “Nooo, don’t touch me,” and I tried to pick him up and he did that worm thing where they flip around and they’re all, “DON’T TOUCH ME! DON’T EAT ME! LEAVE ME ALONE!”

I am the worm whisperer, in case you were wondering.

So anyway, as he was flipping, he became three-dimensional enough for me to pluck off the asphalt. Then I cupped my hand around him and carried him out to the worm bin, where he seemed extremely happy and relieved to be set in the soft, moist soil full of yummy kitchen scraps.

I don’t know if I will continue to touch them with my bare hands, but it’s a step in the right direction, anyway.

After I dropped him off, I went back out to look for more worms in distress. The street is littered with all sorts of debris from the recent rain, some of which can look slightly wormish. So I used my bird-watching technique.

I’m warning you, this is going to come across as me being very deep. Instead of looking for movement, I look at the silence. Instead of letting your eyes dart about for birds, just observe the tree in its lack of motion. Then the small movements will pop out at you.

I tried this with the worms, but I don’t think there were any more in plain sight.

So anyway, that look at the silence thing has been part of my bird-sighting process for years, and whenever I do it, I’m struck by how zen it sounds, but how there is actually no greater application for it or any way to translate it to life.

I mean, I don’t know, maybe there is, but I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve thought, “Aha! I can solve this problem! I will just look at the silence.”

But it sounds cool. And like I said, it’s great when you’re trying to find a bird in a tree. Just don’t go trying to use it to solve any life problems, because I think you’ll be disappointed.

The Daily Plah: Day 7
Currently reading: Superfreakonomics
Other notable facts: I sewed a very cute (in my humble opinion) little clutch-type bag today. Then I tried to take it shopping, and I realized that clutch-type bags are really more for going out and looking cute than shopping in a functional manner. Maybe I’ll post a picture tomorrow or something.

3 comments March 7th, 2010

Thoughts on the coming storm (not a metaphorical storm)

Out here in LA, we have a lot of days where it looks like it might rain. But conventional wisdom says that, no matter how much it looks like it might rain, if it’s not the rainy season, it’s not going to. (Becoming ingrained in this mode of thinking will really get you into trouble when you go home to visit places like Florida and Georgia, where, it turns out, often when it looks like rain, it is actually going to rain.)

But here we are, back in the rainy season! With an actual storm on the horizon. One with actual water predicted to fall from its belly. There’s a weird sense of anticipation in this city when a storm is coming. The local weathermen just about go out of their minds with glee. Everyone else just seems slightly unsettled.

And the vacant lot up the street is once again drooping into the gutters and bringing about the necessity of the rest of the neighbors going and shoveling hundreds of pounds of dirt out of the way, to keep the drainage distributed between both sides of the street. If we don’t, the north side of the street will have no water, and our side (the downhill side) will have all of the water, which isn’t really fair, is it?

We don’t use sandbags. We might, if we had some, but they have a tendency to explode and leave piles of gravel all over the place. Instead, we use a very sophisticated and attractive system of buckets, 2×6s and tarps to keep the water from actually coming down the front stairs and pouring through the house. Even in the worst of times, we’ve never actually seen it close enough for real worry, but now that a storm is coming, I’ve made plans to leave work with enough daylight to get home and start shoveling

It sure would be easier if the guy who owned the vacant lot would take care of his property, but considering he never got around to clearing his brush, even in the height of brush fire season, I somehow doubt he’s going to show up to heroically look after the rest of us.

It’s all right. I don’t mind the work. I’m pretty handy with a shovel. And I look totally hip in my new rainboots.

4 comments November 24th, 2008

The wormpocalypse has begun.

(I’m not blogging at The Debutante Ball today, because the 2008 class is back to celebrate the launch week of the final 2008 Deb release, Gail Konop Baker’s Cancer is a Bitch.)

Now. On to the wormpocalypse.

I don’t know what it is about this time of year, but starting about two weeks ago, they started showing up in the street:

The worms. (You might have guessed that by now.)

We live on a hillside street with no sidewalks. Very few people have any yards to speak of, because of the slope of the hill. Because of this, the worms have nowhere to go. I don’t know where they come from or what propelled them down the hill, but I can tell you: they’re everywhere. And it’s fairly gross.

By the time I walk Winston in the morning, it’s usually way too late for most of that day’s worms. I almost always manage to save at least one (I use the still-empty blue doggie bag as a glove), but I don’t know where, in our desert climate, to set a worm to promote his future happiness and well-being. So I usually find the deepest pile of damp leaves in sight and drop the little guy there (and they never thank me!).

So anyway, that’s my slightly-less-poetic version of the story about the guy throwing one starfish at a time back into the ocean. Picture me with a blue doggie bag on my hand, holding up a worm (who is flipping around all angrily) and saying, “It makes a difference to this one.”

Anyway…

(Nice segue, right?)

Nice Segway, right?

Yesterday was the husb’s birthday (I am no longer “the older woman”!), and his brilliant co-workers rented him a Segway for the day. Naturally I had to stop by and have a turn on it. The movement is really quite intuitive, and then you get in your car and feel like you should be able to change lanes by leaning to the left, which is sorta dangerous.

(And how about that posture? Am I a chiropractor’s dream or what?)

Okey dokey, that’s it! I have to go run some errands.

4 comments September 30th, 2008

It’s mighty whaleish out there.

In Actual Writing News, I downloaded a trial version of the program Scrivener and am using it to help me with my revisions of Project X. I’m slightly skeptical, but I’m going to give it a try. The problem is that (without sounding immodest), I am an absolute master of Microsoft Word, and Scrivener has a lot less going on in the bells & whistles department. However, one might argue that a manuscript, unlike a script for TV, doesn’t need so many bells and whistles. I’ll do a review soon if anyone is curious.

In Other News… yesterday we went whale watching!

I’d always pictured whale-watchers as people wearing giant yellow ponchos, holding onto the sides of a ratty old fishing boat (or whale-watching boat, I guess), getting splashed and tossed about and turning green and having to “heave ho” over the side of the railing, if you get my drift.

Not in Southern California, wouldn’t you know. No, out here we go poncho-less. We ride around on a 50-foot Catamaran, basking in the sun and the breeze and eating brownies and only turning slightly green toward the end of the trip (what can I say? I’m a wuss… but I never heaved my ho over the rail).

We were the second trip of the day, and the captain of the boat sadly informed us that the past few days’ trips had yielded not a single whale sighting. Still, as we made our way out to open sea, he was overheard to say to his skipper, “It’s looking mighty whale-ish out here.”

(And don’t think the potential consequences of a “three-hour tour” were lost on me. I was sizing up our fellow voyagers, trying to pin down some Gingers and Mary Annes and Gilligans among us. I’d like to think I could maybe be the Professor.)

I don’t believe in the laws of attraction, but you have to think that 20-something people standing attentively at the railings of a boat, all thinking, “Whale! Whale! Whale! Whale!” would produce some kind of result.

And they did–a sea lion.

But then the captain said, “I see a water spout about two miles ahead!” and everyone got very excited, and the boat kicked it into high gear. As we got closer, everyone saw the water spout (well, not me, apparently what I was looking at was a small boat on the horizon). Then another water spout… then maybe a third one, although we were told not to get our hopes up.

Suddenly, we saw them–blue whales.

Blue whales are the largest living animal, and let me tell you–they’re big.

They’re not blue, but they got their name because, as they approach the surface, the sunlight reflecting off their gray skin causes giant turquoise spots to appear just under the surface of the water.

So not blue, but YES, big. They appear over the surface of the water in a giant arc, first spouting their blowholes, then continuing the motion, so you see the whole length of their bodies go through the motion. And OMG, people. They’re enormous. Did I mention that? They go on forever. One we saw was probably 80 feet long.

We saw three at first, and the captain seemed to think we were seeing a very rarely-observed mating behavior, wherein two male whales (we’ll call them “mwhales”) were trying to convince the same lady whale that each was the mwhale for her. We followed alongside them for a few minutes, while they were swimming quickly up the coast. Apparently they aren’t so much bothered by boats taking a parallel course, but when an overexcited guy on a little fishing boat cut in front of their path, they disappeared. Whale Etiquette Tip #1: don’t cut in front of the whales.

So our angry captain whistled and gestured for the other boat to go away, which he did. We watched forlornly the surface of the water, hoping our whale friends (we’ll call them “frwhales”) would stick around for a while and surface within sight of the boat.

And they did. They stuck around for probably another half hour or forty-five minutes. At one point, one went under the boat, and those with sharper eyes than mine could see the blueness of the whale passing beneath us. At another point, one surprised us by surfacing probably forty feet from the side of the boat, huffing its blowhole and showing off the gigantic length of its body.

Our captain called back to shore to another whale-watching boat that hadn’t had any luck, and they joined us. A few other boats joined the train–a sailboat, a few pleasure boaters. Whale Etiquette Tip #2: do what the whale-watching boats do. Follow them. They’re experts.

At one point, a whale came up in front of us at such an angle that we could experience not only the length of its back but the girth. And ohmygoodness, it was about ten feet wide. They are so BIG. So, so big.

Here is a chart showing how big they are. Click the chart to visit the Blue Whale Info website.

After a while, the whales got tired of putting on a show for us. They went under and high-tailed it (whale-tailed it?) outta there. We bobbed on the water for a few minutes (commence green-turning sequence) and then turned back toward shore. Our captain was very disappointed that, having presented us with an amazing hour of rare giant blue whale behavior, he couldn’t find any dolphins to escort us back to the marina.

We did drive by a buoy that was a resting spot for several adolescent sea lions, though. And those things are so cute, let me tell you. They remind me of Winston, they way he’ll just flop down in a comfy position and doze, not caring whose face his butt is on or anything like that. Sea Lion Etiquette Tip #1: if you can balance on it, you can sleep on it.

So an incredible day. I never thought I was the whale-watching type, but it turns out I am. In fact, next time you go whale-watching, you should invite me, because apparently my soft calls of, “Heeeeeere, whale whale whale… come here, whale whale whale,” are startlingly effective. Also, I promise to try my best not to heave ho on your boat.

9 comments September 8th, 2008

Two words: supervolcano

Ha! I know that’s just one word, but at work I’m dealing with questionnaires that say, “Describe this dog in one word,” and the amount of people who don’t know the definition of the number one is staggering.

“Always ready to show!”
“Fun/loving/energetic”
“He is amazing”

Next time, I’ll say, “Describe this dog in one (1) word.” Perhaps that’ll clear things up.

Although the responses are all delightful to me. I like it when people at dog shows take the time to write down cute stuff about their dogs. It’s all about the dogs, after all.

Oh, no, wait–today it’s all about the supervolcano.

Evidence can be found here.

Please resume with your day, which you may feel is oddly invaded by my multiple blog entries. See, this is what happens when you take away my computer.

May 1st, 2008

And so it grows…

(or, “Wishful Thinking”)

We recently had some landscaping done in our backyard. What was once just ivy is now a terraced little yard, and what was once a deck that belonged to a monstrous 1980s party hot tub is now refinished and furnished with barbecue supplies.

Because of this, and also because of books like Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I have taken a keen interest in trying to grow some plants. Some edible, some not.

I have a history of killing plants. Or, more euphemistically, not keeping them alive. So I decided that maybe growing things from scratch would give me more of a sense of involvement and responsibility. I bought some seeds and planted bell peppers and oregano in a couple of little pots. Two bell pepper seeds sprouted, but the oregon was silent. So one day, when I was bored, I took a few garlic cloves that had sprouted in the kitchen and stuck them in the oregano pot. Naturally, four days later, hundreds of little oreganos sprouted out of the soil.

Last weekend, I transplanted some things and planted some new things, and now we’re playing the waiting game.

I was right about being more invested, too. I water those little buggers every day.

Here’s a tour of how things look right now.

This is my shade garden, at the side of the house where the hammock (a $15 cloth number, criminally comfortable) is… mostly shady, especially later in summer as the sun goes off behind the trees. This is all new planting. The tall guy at the back will be a fern; so will the terra cotta round pot. The two in the foreground should be begonias. No, will be! Will be begonias. Positive thinking.

This is a place under the overhang of the downstairs balcony where I dropped some of the oregano sprouts. I can’t believe that so many of those seeds sprouted at once. Talk about an embarrassment of riches, and poor planning. I stuck this ball of dirt here as an afterthought, hoping it might decide to fill in the awkward area between the ivy and the little curb. That big green thing is new; it’s not oregano. I don’t know what it is. I am also trying to grow a leather strap, apparently.

These are my sunny plants. In the back are Peruvian Daffodil and asparagus; then some garlic (thriving! go figure), mint, and oregano (assuming they pull through); the rectangle is my bell peppers, although I’m losing hope because they’ve been that size for weeks now; and in front is another Peruvian Daffodil.

The front daffodil pot is notable because something has dug through it, and I’m not even sure the bulb is still in there. Apparently skunks will root around in pots and eat bulbs. This makes me exceedingly sad, but I don’t know how to check without potentially destroying it, so I’m just going to keep watering it and then maybe eventually plant some basil or something.

So that’s the excitement in my life. It’s amazing how much more fun this stuff is when you’re a grown-up than when your parents force you to do it as a child.

I’ll provide updates occasionally, and if anything exciting happens. Cross your fingers, and we may have a full-blown leather strap plant before long!

Oh, and the big news, thanks to this post by Jemima Bean is that we have a peach tree! I saw the photo of the flowers and asked her what they were, because we had some. She replied that they were peaches, and sure enough when we looked more closely at the tree, there were fuzzy baby peaches on it! Hundreds of them, actually.

The guy we bought the house from knew there was a peach tree but never remembered it bearing any fruit (probably because it used to be so shady in the yard). But now… peaches! Peaches! Peaches! We pruned the tree ruthlessly, as apparently is the way to maximize peaches, and now we are just waiting… waiting… waiting…

6 comments April 26th, 2008

sad ending :-(

I just got a call from the kind people at the hummingbird rescue. The bird died. Apparently she had a back injury. So maybe it was a collision after all.

Nature is so mean sometimes!

Poor little thing.

7 comments April 23rd, 2008

On the first day of Christmas…

(I began this post yesterday and I’m finishing it this morning. I have regained feeling in my hand, you’ll be happy to know.)

Okay, so starting today (yesterday!), I’m going to post in one or both of my blogs every day until Christmas. True, it doesn’t make any sense. I’m really busy and I just get crankier all the time and right now I can’t even feel my right hand because I was applying Ben-Gay to the husb’s poor aching back (Guitar Hero really does a number on those of us with largely sedentary lifestyles).

But I love this season so I’ll give it a try.

And what’s more, I’ll use that song to add a challenging theme to my posts.

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me… (one numb hand) …a partridge in a pear tree.

Okay, a little Googling has revealed that everyone wants to claim the song’s meaning for their own purposes. The prevailing theory is that the partridge is Jesus and the pear tree is the cross. But there are bird watchers who claim the first line is actually “a partridge in a [bastardization of the French word for partridge]“. So now we have songs about bird pregnancy to warm our hearts this holiday season.

Well, speaking of bird pregnancy, let’s reflect on one of the most precious and heart-rending experiences of my 2007: the house finches on the balcony.

In March, we hung up some hanging plants and soon realized that a pair of house finches had chosen one as their home (we realized this when the husb tried to move the plant and a bird flew out at his face, ha ha ha). They laid some eggs. The eggs hatched to babies.

All the while, things were getting kind of dire because we couldn’t water the plant and it was starting to get leafbare (new word alert!). That was also during the time of massive windstorms sweeping through Southern California, and as we are on a hillside, we watched the hanging plant swing and twirl in the wind with a great deal of fear in our hearts.

Finally, we completely rearranged the balcony furniture so we could hang the plant from the tile-top table, from which we removed several tiles to make this work. Then we sat and watched for the agonizing few minutes when the parents sat on the railing, looking up at the spot where the plant had hung. They searched the entire ceiling of the balcony. It was the cutest and most suspenseful thing I’ve ever seen. Finally, the mother was like, “Oh, DUH!” and flew right down to the plant in its new lower spot.

In the new location, I was able to wait until Mum and Dad were away and snap some very good photos (one of which was on another Animal Planet show my company produced, although they had to say it was taken by “Winston Schmidt”, since they’d already used another photo I took, although apparently Jeff Corwin made fun of the first photo when he had to introduce it… it was a picture of a lizard).

But I digress. (That should actually be the name of this blog.)

Anyway, the ending is sad. Too sad for Christmas. Let’s just say that thanks to a nasty scrub jay who’d been terrorizing the backyard (including the hawks who’d nested in the Eucalyptus across the street), I came home one day to find no partridges in my pear tree.

I learned a lesson about hanging plants: don’t have them.

In fact, that’s our moral today: hanging plants will always break your heart.

Happy holidays!

PS – Delaying this post a day brings us down to 11 days of Christmas, so maybe I’ll run over into Boxing Day.

3 comments December 14th, 2007