glory 602

I plant the flowers, he takes the pictures. This one is spectacular. Spent backyard time with a a &t. There's nothing like girlfriends.

601

Maybe I'll just start numbering them.





I am painting the honor table and looking forward to coffee with the a's tomorrow. two a's and a little t.







I really need to finish the table because the zuchinni is happening and we can't possibly eat it all. People walk by all day with comments such as, "Lovely harvest." Things like that. I'm from the country. People used to say stuff more like, "Whaddya gonna do with all that shit?" Farm lingo. Good ol' country folk. This urban gardening will have its own language, I'm sure. Everyone is thrilled that I will singlehandedly feed the homeless with six squash and two tomatoes and a few spiny cucumbers, but what can I tell them? I don't want people out in my yard, thus, the table. Isn't it pretty? It isn't quite done yet, but tomorrow...

600th post

Bluesky celebrates 600 posts since its inception in january of 2004. So, five and a half years, that's, let's see, about 110 posts per year on average.

What I can and do celebrate is doing something continuously, like keeping the same phone number or address. My 600th post is further evidence of stability, something I both seek and detest. I tolerate the absence of chaos like a skinless animal in hot sun. I know it is a nasty image, but this is how I'm feeling this morning. I see homeless people wandering my street and think they have it made. When I moved every six months or so-- no notice, outstanding bills-- life was so difficult, but I knew what to do. I knew how to do poverty with flourish. But this nice life? Ah, retrospection. Everything looks better in the rearview mirror. Remember those station wagons with the seat facing backward? I liked sitting there.

garden update

Yellow lily along the center of the house.

Squash and sunflowers

Green tomatoes

One fine pink lily, the photograph nearly as impressive as the flower.

Thought I'd post some midsummer pictures of the urban garden. We are dining from it each evening: squash and lettuce, jalapenos and peas. I made basil oil today by blanching the basil and drying it, then blending it with olive oil and freezing for use in soups and sauces. Yummy. I'm working on the honor table, as asha calls it. It will be a thing of beauty, strapped to the raywood ash tree in front of my house in the event someone doesn't fully grasp the concept of honor. Heaven knows it eludes me from time to time.

alaskan food

Okay, so I've included a shot of The intersection of the Seward Highway and the road to Soldotna; downtown Homer; Kurt's dad on the boat; overlooking Cook Inlet; Kurt with the big(gest) fish; a Russian Orthodox church in Ninilchik.

So, with a freezer full of halibut and salmon, our choices are unlimited. Unafraid of failure, we take chances. He takes chances. Grilled halibut and salmon with currants and lemon pepper.

Wow. The halibut was amazing. The salmon was good, but the steak a bit too thick to cook properly on the grill. But the halibut, and veggies from our garden and brown rice..mmmmmmmmmmmmm. It was a very very good dinner. Rice and fish, fish and rice.

We eat well.

ac

Why is it, on the hottest day of the year when my husband is in Alaska, the AC breaks down? Why? AC is entirely too important to me. I don't think I'll die of the heat like Sid almost did in the back of my car in southern oregon last week. Not really, but he was pretty hot and mad at me the rest of the way home. I thought I'd killed him, but turns out he had eated a bunch of dry grass when hanging out on the Applegate and it had failed to make it through the pipe and he finally puked it up two days later, a bale of straw on my living room rug. I'm saving it for Kurt, for when he gets back from Alaska with two halibut and a 48 lb king salmon. Whoopee!

It was my honest intention to stay home tomorrow, on the Fourth of July, to be cool. I hate being hot--me with the vitamin D deficiency. So, invited as most people are to various picnics and potlucks, now I don't know what to do. I guess I'll have to find coolness elsewhere.

So, I'm bring salad wherever I go because I have to use up my lettuce which is taking over everything, although I can't really figure out if the spinach is working out right or not. As I've mentioned, the spinach knows what to do. I picked my first two zuchinni today, and will use it in a marinara-based ragu of hot sausage, peppers, purple onion, italian green beans and my little zuchinni. I will bring left overs and salad wherever I go.

Because I am an urban gardener, I am going to set up a vegetable stand for people walking by. Colleen Russell, an old spiritual advisor of mine, used to have a can for money and an on-your-honor policy which I don't think would do as well here as it did in Talent, Oregon. But who's to say. I don't really care (theme) and will have an abundance of food, so am happy to contribute to the wellbeing of my neighbors and passers by. I will paint a small table in cheerful Mexican colors leftover from my garret and put out a can with a $? on it and see what happens. I don't picture it filling up.

I need to confess that yesterday I at two pounds of cherries and I feel like the church lady in The Witches of Eastwick. I may die.

west east south and north

In that order. East to the coast, westward home, south to the Rogue Valley and North back home. Husband in Alaska, I am fending for myself. So far I have made coffee and eaten nothing, this first day back home.

I am working on an old manuscript for the bzillionth time and have nearly finished the first red ink go-through. Then a retyping of the whole thing. It has been sitting for six years, and I think I can be more objective for this revision. Its funny... when this thing was nearly published, I was so sure I was finished with it. Now, it feels so bland and immature. I'm so relieved it didn't go out in the current state. I couldn't see it for what it was -- couldn't see those [many] places where I had written well rather than told the story. I can do both, I am certain. An education in writing kills the gift if there is one -- at minimum buries it beneath cleverness and flattery in my case. Say what you mean, mean what you say.

So, if my blog seems thin these days, it is because I am actually writing. Imagine that.

treatise

Campsite

Depot Bay

The dock at Waldport and row of seagulls

Heaven

We camp, therefore we are.

The evolution of my camping experience, like other parts of my life, has much to do with poverty. I have camped-out on porches--screened and unscreened, beside railroad tracks, next to rivers, lakes, oceans (ocean. one.) I have camped-out alongside creeks in many areas of Oregon while on the run from one bad act or another. This was not actual camping. This was avoiding responsibility, adulthood and inevitable consequences.

Growing up, my father dropped us off for the summer at McKee Bridge park and would visit each weekend and we camped the summer away in 110 degree Southern Oregon weather, renting painted orange innertubes that I was allergic to, but floated on anyway, covered with the beachtowel of the season, trying to keep my rash at bay. I learned to swim there, at McKee Bridge, when my schizophrenic uncle threw me out in the middle of the river thinking I knew how. I didn't know then that this would mimic my life to come. Was I afraid? I was. Did it stop me? It did not. I was neither brave nor courageous. I simply didn't die, and this has been my barometer. Set your standards low, I say. Nobody dies, its a good day.

So, the first legitimate camping had to wait until I had a job, because it isn't really camping unless you are on vacation, right? I mean, otherwise its just being homeless. Am I wrong? So when I was finally gainfully employed long enough to be paid to not be there for a week, I went camping. I knew nothing else. Its what you do. Its what we did, therefore.... So all I had was a car with a plywood backseat (see previous posts) and we had to camp in that. I don't remember the first year I actually had a tent, but I couldn't stand up in it, I know that. I cooked over an open fire using pots and pans from home and spent hours scrubbing the black off them when I got home.

The next evolution was the coleman stove. I never did like the pump up stove. I've never liked or trusted white gas. I knew too many hippies who didn't get it, who would blow up the camp and never be able to boil water on the damned things. Having learned early how to build a good fire and stack rocks to level the grill, I pretty much cooked that way, even when we had a coleman stove. Besides, wood was free and I could afford matches.

Next came a tent I could stand up in. Still, the bed was on the floor and year by year, getting up in the morning became progressively more difficult. From there: marriage and the combining of assets. Now, we have every conceiveable real-camping item: good tent, camper shell on back of truck for the bed, a small folding kitchen stand, folding tables, permanent camping-only pots and pans -- you know, the blue spatterware, and a two-burner propane stove. This year, a Mr. Heater was added to the mix. This little gem is a stand alone propane burner that blows hot air in under the pop up gazebo with a net enclosure. Did I mention the pop-up gazebo or the trailer we have to rent to haul all the shit? Ah, camping. The simple life. Back to nature. Turns out the only thing that got trapped in the net enclosure was me. With the bugs.

So there we were, in Beverly Beach, more of a Californian campground than I am accustomed to. Very organized. A nice campsite right on the ocean, and because it is right on the ocean, it is also right on 101. I didn't care (theme of blog). In fact, as I made the long trek to the bathrooms each morning (and hourly thereafter) and watched the little old ladies strolled by as I stood at my little camp kitchen doing dishes outside, I began looking at the smaller travel trailers, envy in my heart. Unfortunately, we don't have room to park anything permanent.

I've figured it out, the transition from tent camping to rolling home. It isn't only increasing financial capacity, it is physiological: as the female bladder gives way, the need for a self-contained camping unit increases. Men? They will piss on trees as long as they can walk upright, but women? We are condemned to the long walk -- the long cold rainy walk at five in the morning.

I'm thinking: rentals.

seattle

Daytrippers, that's us. We (he) drove up yesterday morning and had a ridiculously expensive and so-so lunch at the Crabpot, but it is what I wanted to do, so I did it. They bring a huge pot of boiled seafood, red potato and corn and dump it on butcher paper and give you a crab fork and a mallot and off you go. Barbaric.

My husband said next time, we'll walk over to Clay's and have them dump my salmon platter right on the table. That way, we'll save money and gas and the food will be better. But they did give us a huge piece of mud pie for my birthday.

Then, we walked straight up the five flights of stairs without stopping to Pike's Place and after I was hospitalized for cardiac pain (no, not really, but I did begin to get a sense of the "elephant sitting on your chest" that you hear so much about) we strolled on down to the market and looked around.

The guy driving the rainbow school bus was allegedly out to save souls, ranting about how you marry some person you don't even know and you go to church on Sunday and you still don't know anything about that person and how he just wanted "someone who's 100%." So, truthfully, I'm not sure he wasn't just going to extreme lengths to find a date.

The peppers were gorgeous, and paper cones full of sweetpeas and flowers and flowers and thousands of people crushing through narrow markets of perfect produce. We would have taken the ferry to Vashon Island like we did on vacation, but Sid was home alone.

It was a beautiful day in Seattle. See?

not sick

A blogger outage on my birthday??? Arrgghh.

Well, I'm not sick. I guess that's the good news. I haven't felt sick for two or three weeks now. I can hardly remember being sick, although I called asia and when I told her I wasn't working today, her first question was, "You're not sick again are you?" A reasonable assumption. Long freaking winterspring.

Nope, I'm fine. My garden is growing, I'm out supporting the economy for all I'm worth which is more than it used to be, and all is well with the world. I say these things when I'm not working. I was listening to some guy on NPR talking about how much he hated working and he's an actor making 35K a week for a sitcom and two lines and he doesnt' wanna. Doesn't, like me, wanna do anything. She asked him (Terri Gross. I can't stand her interview style. Gross.) Anyway, she asks him, "What is it then you'd rather be doing? Sitting home all day watching TV?" And his answer was, "No. I just would rather shoot heroin." Now this is a guy I understand. If there was only enough.

Anyway, not to wax darkly, but it WAS something to do on a sunny windy rainy snowy day.

So, the sun is sort of out. It is my birthweek and I want to go to Seattle for my birthday dinner. I want to go the the crabpot where they just dump out a bunch of boiled seafood on butcher paper and hand you a bib. Cave style.

Then, time for camping. We will start out at the coast and depending on the weather, move camp as desired. We pretty much have it down to a science. I own everything camping related. Today I bought a screen liner for our QuikShade. We can keep the bugs out ala West Nile. Swine, Westnile, Birdflu. Jeez. Its a dangerous world, and that isn't even talking about the maniacs. But given recent trends, the age group that should live in mortal fear is the fetal to seven range.

That was bad.

Well, Lula broke another hip. That's two. That's it. Still she wants to get up and go. You can't keep her still, but I will try. One more time.

dinner

My husband caught a catfish out of the Willamette and we had it for dinner.

There. That seems like a complete post. Bring on the digestive advice. I'll be sitting here glowing in the dark. It is a tiny bit scary, but damn good eatin'.

I only get one day off this weekend. This makes me cranky.

babies

Maybe its because asia had her little baby. Maybe I'm just a sucker. If there's one born every minute then there's no reason it wouldn't be me. So there I was at Walmarche, shopping for toothpaste and shampoo for all my little people, unsuspecting. I saw a sign that said, "Free Kittens." Now, I don't like cats. I don't hate them, but I don't love them and they try to sit on my paper when I write or read, so right there is a problem.

So I walk up to this guy, this crackhead who clearly hasn't done his part to spay and neuter, and they are so damn cute. I think, hey, we just had to put the cat down, good ol' Charlie who was allegedly twenty years old and he might have been. He used to belong to Rosetta but she died and we just kept him. I guess he got kidney cancer and last week we had to put him down.

Now it isn't like the resident's missed Charlie. They don't know who they are let alone miss Rosetta's cat, so that isn't the reason. I looked at the kittens, chose the cutest one, a female, and they crackhead says, "Nope, not that one. She's taken." So fine, I think. Dodged a bullet. I went inside Walmarche and shopped.

When I came out, I walk back by the box of kitties and they guy says, "Hey, they didn't take her." So I strolled over and there she was, a tabby with four little white boots. What could I do? So I said okay. But now I have to put my shopping in the car and go back in for food and shit. Fifty bucks later I came back with a bed and food and litter and a sifting litter box for little Bootsie, we'll call her.

I picked her up and she cried. I couldn't take her away from her brother, so I took him too. Two. Two tiny little adorable kittens. Two eventual fucking cats.

You should have seen Lula. She wrinkled up her nose and kissed them like anybody would.

visitors

When it rains, it pours. Just as I was revelling in having asha in the same town as me on the eve of her granddaughter's birth, Cooky and Tracy rolled into town from Montana. They had been visiting a neice in a twelve story house with six hundred bedrooms and three entire apartments, a former minister's wife. The minister is former. In heaven she thinks, and is still holding the town together with both hands leaving nothing for herself.

It was almost like having all of my friends in one place again, except lorretta, and she will come one day, or so she says. But there is still nothing like girlfriends. Nothing like talking until you fall off to sleep, like a slumber party only without the boys. Well, one boy. Mine.

I still haven't seen asha, but believe she is actualy here and will appear at some point. I have seen that sweet little baby girl, though. Oh it made me want to be a grandma so bad that I called my son. Nothing happening there.

Ah well, in good time.

yard sale review

I don't like estate sales. This much we know. I don't like perma sales or close-out merchandise pretending to be yard sales. But today was a good day.

I got a book about Collette, a woman who has, like Anais Nin, always fascinated me. European. I also found two odd shaped old-school terra cotta pots; an antique metal, hang over the side of our clawfoot tub, soap holder; and three crappy novels that I will read because I'll read anything almost and these were three for a quarter and you know how I feel about prices at yard sales. Once I start a book I have to finish, eventually. Even Nora Roberts, I'm embarrassed to admit. But these are murder-most-foul, and that keeps me turning the pages.

I don't like the sales that are obviously the girlfriend's stuff. One sale today was a college lit major with buckets of high-minded literature and one book on men by Dave Barry, so we bought that one. My favorite is "Dave Barry Turns 50." I remember reading it out loud to Joanne while we were driving down the freeway home from visiting the nuthouse in Salem and it was raining so hard she needed something to keep her from completely freaking out.

So, I got my way for the couple of hours that my husband didn't fish today. Then, I came home and had a coughing fit so bad I puked and now my legs hurt from the pressure. My lungs will blow up one day, just you wait.

d

Okay, look--here's my theory: I suffer from vitamin D deficiency. I can't figure anything else out. My doctor is too stupid to figure it out and won't refer me, so I'm getting some backdoor advice. One month to the day after my April 11th bout, I went under again. These lost weeks are running into lost seasons. I'm tired. I'm confused. I'm concerned.

So, I started looking at where I live now, in the darkish northland, in the perpetual gray of Portland, and began looking at the literature on old people who are now being prescribed mega-doses (50,000 iu/wk) for depression, immune deficiency, ongoing flu-like symptoms, fall risk, etc etc etc and I thought, hey. I'm indoors all day with old people. I'm old people almost. I'm old enough. I get the mailers from aarp for crying out loud. So, this nurse starts talking about D and how new research is showing how depleted we are in the NW and then, just as we are talking about it, an email pops up from this health nut scientologist friend of mine, and its about D and I think: hey. Synchronicity. You don't have to hit me over the head with a brick.

So I bought some good, high-dose vitamin D. All of the antibiotics aren't working very well.

I'm sick of being sick. I'm sick of talking about being sick and I'm betting you're sick of reading about my being sick. sickening.

You have my apologies. I'll stop soon. I got this card for my ex once that said, "Remember all the trouble I've caused you?" you open it up and inside it said, "I'm almost done."

So, I'm almost done. I'm done.

lula interrupted

Lula fell. This happens. They don't recognize furniture as obstacles, see shadows as holes, glare as solid objects. So her fragile long leg cracked at the hip and now they've fixed that, but not her, and she's in a cage. Like a fly in a web, scrambling at the edges, trying to find her way home. Again. I crawled part way in the cage and stroked her hair until she fell asleep.

I think I can't do this anymore. I think I should never do anything else. I think I've seen too much and then I imagine I haven't even seen the tip of the iceburg.

yard evolution

In some order: row of veggie pots; bowl of bulbs; sunset azalea just opening; back porch and pots.

good ol' warren

Warren Goines, hanging in the lobby of Francis Xavier Restaurant, Gresham Oregon.

addendum

And more pots, and then.... half the yard is gone. It went like this: Hey, this really gets good sun. What if we just dug up the grass another three feet behind the flowers... and now, a veggie garden in the front yard! Hooray!

So off to market for more plant starts: more basil, more green peppers, lemon cukes, regular cukes, zuchinni, pole beans, yellow zuchinni and one thai pepper, in honor of Ashland. Sid even got some of his shit space back. How great is that?

pots

Sitting in my place, sun streams into the living room, blinding me as I type. I will not complain. It could be months before I see it again. I keep planting things, assuming they will grow in the gray light of Portland's spring.

People ask, when my shopping cart is full of starts: jalapeno and green peppers, four kinds of tomato, lemon cucumbers and sixpacks of lobelia, pansy and petunia; if I am some kind of professional gardener and what is the secret to growing things. They don't have a green thumb, they claim. I tell them all they need is water--the seeds know what to do.

But that's the trick: follow through. Not my strong suit. But I do love spring, and each year I promise that come the blistering afternoons of July, I won't abandon my posies and peppers for the cool of my airconditioned life. I will water. I will.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I'm taking over the sidewalk in front of the house. Apparently you have to get the city's blessing if you make raised beds, so I'm just doing lotsa pots. My honey asked if I was concerned that people walking by would take the veggies. I hope they do. I can never eat them all. I just like to grow shit.