9 August 09
Field Of Sun
Late this spring they planted the field just south of our house in sunflowers.
9 August 09
A Fine Day By The Bay
We went on an wonderful outing today to the Giants game in San Francisco, escaping the heat for a pleasant sunny SF day with the fog content to hang just outside the Gate, taking a lovely ferry ride from Vallejo direct to the ballpark, meeting up with our friend Barbara at the game and returning back to Davis with her, and best of all, watching the Giants come from behind and beat the Cincinnati Reds 4-2 in convincing fashion! The bullpen was solid, unlike last night’s meltdown.
I hope everybody’s Sneak Some Zucchini onto Your Neighbors’ Porch Day went according to plan.
7 August 09
Unidimensionality, a Reflection
Davis is a small enough town that you run into people you know well often, people you know less well just as often, and people you hardly know at all pretty much just as often too (these are the people whose name you have learned several times but can’t remember it, nor can you remember the context in which you last saw them, such memory lapses leading to annual embarrassment which I am now happy to blame on menopause).
One of the middle type (a cyclist) only ever seems to see me as a birder. On running into each other, the conversation tends to go like this:
Me: Hi, D.
D: Hi, A! Guess what I saw at my house yesterday! A heron!
Me: Oh, that’s nice.
D: Yes, it was posing/eating/standing/flying (etc.)
I’m not sure why this bothers me so much, but I think it’s because it reduces me to a tiny fragment of my personality, reflecting only one of scores of interests. (It’s akin to when people catch a tiny fragment of my accent and wonder where in Ireland I’m from.) I have actually raised this with D, that I do a bit more than bird. Readers of this blog probably suspect, with good reason, I’m multidimensional to a manic fault.
So I figured it must be a context thing, and started a map of my different personae across Davis. It’s all in the mapping. What would your personal map look like?
(I realize I have trespassed on Numenius’ turf; it’s both his turn to blog and his profession. Sorry, Numenius. You can have the next two.)
4 August 09
Watermelons Everywhere
Part of the trouble with growing things like watermelons is that each plant only produces one or two (unlike butternut squashes, which are breeding faster than the rabbits that live in the ground under them), you plant them at the start of the season, they take up loads of room (though nowhere near as much as our one Hubbard squash, which is by now halfway to Dixon), and then they all ripen at once.
You can store ordinary melons after they’ve been picked for quite a while. But watermelons are best eaten, like corn, shortly after they’ve been picked.
One of the long grays burst open on Saturday. Before it became food for ground squirrels (one is pictured above, eating its way through a watermelon bowl) and ants, we picked it and took it over to a friend’s for dessert. More watermelons are looming in our immediate future….
2 August 09
Aerial Mayhem
At eight this morning all chaos was going on overhead. First the whooossh of the propane burner of a balloon floating nearby, and then the persistent buzzing of motorized paragliders. I looked outside — there were at least three balloons in the neighborhood, with a couple of paragliders zooming around to inspect. (The paragliders take off from southeast of Davis, the balloons launch from somewhere near Woodland.) One of the balloons then landed right by the levee to the north of the house, and the several vans of the balloon ground crew were parked by the side of the road, the crew running out to take down the balloon. I kept the cats inside until the mayhem subsided.
All we needed to add to the scene was a dragon and the confusion would be total.
28 July 09
Demiamputation
The nectarine tree, burdened by fruit, cracks in half. A Nuttall’s woodpecker drills into not-quite-ripe fruit. The lavender is crushed.
(Submitted for the 38th Festival of the Trees.)
24 July 09
Minding The Field
Oblivious to the approaching balloons, Charlie keeps the field safe from the ravages of the gophers.
18 July 09
Spinning
I spent the day at Meridian Jacobs farm near Dixon today, learning how to spin on a wheel. I had a blast and spun lots of yarn and even plied some. Hoping to do a lot more tomorrow. The instructor lent me a wheel to bring home but I haven’t done much tonight, I’m tired.
Charlie’s tired too.
We carded, learned to draw out the fibers from the roving or batt, learned how to spin them tightly and let the spin travel up the drawing-out. I tried two different wheels and hope to try a third tomorrow. The hardest part is to spin a consistent width, and especially to keep that small. I am doing better with this next round and will try and post a photo of the finished product tomorrow. At right is the first attempt. I know it looks like a giant squid. Hoping for better…
15 July 09
East College
I’m back from my vacation to Brunswick, Maine and Greencastle, Indiana. Here’s a sketch of East College at DePauw University in Greencastle. The cornerstone of the building was laid down in 1870.
9 July 09
Two Weeks
It’s been a fortnight since I arrived in Maine. I didn’t quite make it to mum’s hospital the night I arrived, the plane was delayed, but got in the following morning as early as possible, to find her alert despite narcotics, positive, and with various tubal protrusions.
Tonight, she had a glass of Coppola claret with me, here at home, picking up pens she’s dropped off the floor with a miraculous contraption known as a “grabber” and laughing.
There are other journeys ahead, but I think we’re ready to take them. The knowledge of this, in itself, was plenty reason to come. There have been many others, like making sweet potato ravioli with Simon (aged 8) last night, the song of the wood thrush in the morning, the feeling of rain on my face. Small miracles.
I am ready to go home and back to the drought of California and fiscal emergency and two purring cats. See you back there.