They are Here!

My company is here--at least the first contingent! It is so exciting and so much fun! The time will fly by too quickly, I am sure and so much will be going on especially Saturday when the youngest member of the family and his parents join us. The house will be overflowing and this is good. Nine years ago, the last time we did this we gathered for a funeral. This time we gather for a birthday celebration. Except for the fact that I am tired, it is good.

In the meantime the plants have been growing apace. The basils now fill the space and the tomatoes are growing so fast that they seem to be making up for lost time.

Saturday--traditionally chore day

When I was growing up, Saturday was chore day. Today because I am getting the house ready for guests, the day became one of seemingly endless chores! Laundry is satisfying when it is done--somewhat forboding at the outset. There are now clean sheets for the new air mattress that my guests will use. Blowing that up will be an adventure. More of the living room has emerged--it is amazing what one can do to a living room if one keeps using it as a general sorting space and forgets that it is supposed to be a gracious living area. It will be closer to its real purpose by Wednesday when my sister and her husband arrive.

There is too much yarn in the living room--forget yard sale, maybe what I should do is a living room, yarn sale. (Laughing as she writes this.) Several years ago I combined red and green sport weight yarn that has since been discontinued and made a hat with a matching neck ring (the turtleneck without the sweater) and small mitts. I found the neck ring the other day and have been wearing it. One mitt surfaced today. Where is the other?

The kitchen sink has been the repository of jars and bottles that I have been cleaning out of the refrigerator as well as things that have just been left there. Wash, wash, wash, peel, scrape, scrub. They are quite pretty and will give me goodies to photograph for my squidoo lenses and I am glad--now I just have to find some place to put them. The sink is going to need either Zud or the Barkeeper's Friend to come clean.

Speaking of Squidoo lenses, I am nearing the point of 50 and am determined to bring two or three more up to speed in the next two days in between the scouring, scraping and sorting. A different kind of chore, but still necessary.

And then there are the Halloween designs for my cafepress shop. Halloween is not a holiday that inspires me. It never has been. I love All Saints and All Souls the two days that it leads up to though so I have a design for it too. Guess who is going to be busy for the next two days?

And then just as in the good old days when I was young, procrastination set in. As I dug through the contents of the red chair--a big old armchair that has been full of my stuff for the last several years--I turned on the tv and found the last half hour of Skylark, part of the Sarah Plain and Tall series. I love this series and sat enchanted through two hours of the last movie, the one that I did not know even existed.

It has been a good day and I am glad and grateful. Now I am going to go to bed and read Mary Stewart. Hoping to finish the second book before my family arrives. There is something satisfying about reading an old familiar book for the repeat time, and this is one of those.

Tuesday Once Again

Today I had the pleasure of playing with my plants. The basil smell of coffee grounds (which I sprinkled around them on Sunday) as well as of their own scent. It is a different combination. The roses have gotten leggy and suffered through the heat. I trimmed the dead flowers and dead leaves off the yellow one and was pleased to see two buds waiting in line to bloom. The red one is next and then the Mr. Lincoln. I also sprinkled chopped up banana peels around the base of the roses and the basils as this supplies potassium to the plants. It also feels good not to throw away the banana peels, but to put them to another use. (Eggshells are good for this too. They supply calcium.)

The tomatoes have grown even though the weather is cooler and the days shorter. They smell wonderful. I can hardly wait to see if they flower and fruit and I am wondering if some of the growth is "suckers" that should be removed. Not knowing a whole lot about them I am sort of gardening in the dark here.

Saturday my friend who brought lunch took this picture of my pineapple sage, also known as "Nature's Hummingbird Feeder".



This is a beautiful plant that smells like a ripe pineapple. I highly recommend it to anyone who gardens. Once established it will grow well from cuttings so that you will always have a gift to share with another gardener, or friend who loves hummingbirds.

I am grateful tonight for my garden and the friends who have been helping me with it.

Fall is Here!

It feels like fall is really here! The angle of the light has changed and it is fully dark much earlier now. I began the day watching a hummingbird sipping at the pineapple sage outside the kitchen window, went outside to play with plants and the Fed Ex man arrived with my Pampered Chef order--three new gadgets that are sturdily made tools.

Then I was blessed with lunch from a friend. What I had thought would be a day of work has gone by quickly as a day of play and that is a blessing. Enough time later in the week for work, I am savoring my favorite season and a day to just be relaxed.

This week a friend sent me what may be the most wicked and dangerous recipe ever invented. The 5 minute chocolate microwave mug cake. I thought, "naw this isn't going to work." My mind kept coming back to it until finally I had to try it. (You can google for a zillion variations of it.) I stirred it up in an extra large mug--one of my own designs from Cafepress--and put it in the microwave for three minutes.

For the first minute or so nothing seemed to be happening and then a chocolate pouf rose above the mug and hovered. It extended to the point that I thought it was going to touch the ceiling--and make a mess. Just missing that point it began to collapse and stayed at a certain height above the mug until the microwave shut off and then it disappeared as though the mug had swallowed it up. I was disappointed that it didn't stay high, but grabbed a towel and removed it.

I began eating it from the mug, but quickly realized it wasn't going to cool fast enough so put it out on a plate. It held it's shape quite well and was delicious. The mug took a really long time to cool, though and I find that scary from the standpoint of doing this at all regularly.

The cake, about the size of two cupcakes, was really two portions and I was pleased that I could not eat it all in one sitting.

Cooking and baking are two of the pleasures of cooler weather. I am feeling gratitude tonight. Think that I will make another one sometime this week.

Birthdays and Remembrance

September has always been one of my most favorite times of the year, partly because I went to school for so long that it is etched in my being that Fall is a time of beginnings. It is also a month of family birthdays.


The matriarch of Papa's family (even though she never married, she was the one who held everyone and everything together) was Rose Ellen Manor, known as "Aunt Dade" to all of us. Her birthday was September 6, and I believe the year was 1874.

Today, September 10 was Mama's birthday. She was born in 1910. I wrote about her on February 19, this year on the anniversary of her death. She was born just as the Victorian era had ended and the Edwardian era began. I remember that she told us about the wood burning stove in the kitchen, the parlor and the Christmas customs. When she died, I thought that era truly went with her and a friend of mine agreed, then added sagely and kindly, "Peggy it will live on in you."

The youngest member of our family joined us last year on September 17 and my first cousin and his wife also both have September birthdays.

A cake with candles and flowers were part of birthday celebrations and they are still part of mine. September is completed for me with my own birthday at the end of the month. This year I am looking forward to family members visiting to celebrate it with me.

I am looking forward even as I remember and I am grateful.

Blessings

The fog has rolled back in and it is such a blessing. My stress level goes down markedly when the weather is not so hot. The shortening days are also signaling to all the plants that it is time to bloom. Red flowers on the pineapple sage under my kitchen window attract hummingbirds,for whom the plant has been tended all summer. The basils are producing flower stalks faster than I can cut them to keep up with them for potpourri and the smell of drying basil fills my dining room even as I sit here and type.

There is a feeling of peacefulness because of the weather and the garden that I wish I could replicate and send world wide. Maybe a new fragrance or room air freshner! It could be sprayed in meeting rooms world wide whenever leaders gather to discuss rancorous issues.

Planning the garden's next stage is also a blessing. Now that I know that the side yard will produce food I need to have someone turn the soil and then order the seeds. Kale and chard, turnips, parsnips, beets and carrots would be good for our fall into winter climate.

It will be interesting and useful for future years to see if the late tomatoes actually do produce. I am thinking of tomatoes from my own plants as part of Thanksgiving dinner--and definitely will give thanks for them if there are some.

Today my friend, who is my housekeeper, will come and make order out of my chaos and cleanliness out of my mess. She is a blessing of major proportion in my life, as are the friends who water for me.

In two weeks my sister and her husband will be visiting. Truly a blessing and some real excitement for someone who feels like she is rapidly becoming an old lady.

Blessings abound if only I look for them and I am grateful for them all.

Will it Ever be Cool Again?

It feels like it will never be cool again. The fog, which I love, seems to be sulking somewhere out to sea and our beautiful sea breeze along with it. Natural air conditioning is much nicer and less costly than artificial air, but for the last few days as the temperature soared to 97 degrees, I have wished that I could just flip a switch.

I console myself with the knowledge that in two weeks it will be fall--except that fall is our warmest season, at least at the beginning.

Of course, I love fall for the holidays and because it signals new beginnings, this year even more than usually because of the election.

Meanwhile, the tomatoes and basil that I posted about on Tuesday have continued to grow. The tomatoes seem to be growing exponentially. One day, I thought they seemed bigger in the evening than they were in the morning. Unlike corn in the Midwest that can be heard growing, they aren't making any sound, just quietly filling their grow bags. The roses are thriving too. As long as they have plenty of water, they seem to like the heat.

The days are getting shorter and we will be turning our attention to indoor activities. Soon it will be time for holiday preparations. Summer's heat will be a haze of the past. I will be glad for that, even as I dream of next summer's garden.

Grateful that the fog is supposedly on the way and that the weather will moderate, I hope to post more regularly next week.

How Well my Garden Grows

Sunday afternoon I took pictures of the basils as they are now. They have really grown, even confined to eight inch pots. They are clearly meant to be large plants. They are also the greenest and most delicious basil I have ever had. I love them and will be sad to see them go over the winter.





The tomatoes are growing beautifully in the "grow bags", which look quite a bit like black plastic trash bags, but are not. It will be really interesting to see how these weather the shorter days and lower temperatures as fall comes on.


Several years ago I had one basil plant that made it into November. It flowered and the bees crossed it with a mint so that in the following spring I had a unique, distinctive basil-mint plant that lost its basilness as the summer proceeded. Still it was a special plant to have on the porch leading into the house for basil is the herb of love and mint signifies hospitality--a welcoming combination for visitors to my home.

Disaster Awareness and Disability

Today the victims of hurricane Katrina are being remembered even as the residents of the same area so devastated by that storm get out of the way of nature's new menace, Gustav.

I have always been glad that I do not live in that area, first for the heat and humidity, and then because of the preponderance of hurricanes. Wind and water are such a devastating combination. I wish the hurricane would fizzle out, but that isn't the way that they work over the warm water south of our southern coast.

This area is so important to our economy because of the trade up and down the Mississippi and the oil rigs that sit in the hurricane's path. Oil prices may again rise to the stratosphere both in anticipation of this storm and it's actual aftermath.

I am glad to see people fleeing this time. The image from three years ago that has never left my memory or my heart is that of a blanket thrown over the corpse of someone who died in his/her wheelchair in the Super Dome. I could so easily have been that person.

What has changed since then? A better emergency plan does seem to exist, but does it include the disabled? Will the poor, disabled simply be left behind?

So far as I can see nothing has changed for the disabled per se. This is due, in large measure, in my opinion because we, the disabled, ourselves are never asked what our needs are. We are never included, except in kluge government programs that serve the originator of the programs as well as other bureaucrats and not those of us who need to be included in our nation's economy.

Last week we had several days of excessive heat warning in our area. Nothing is said about checking on the disabled, it's always the elderly and pets. (Well, I nearly qualify in the first category, but not in the second.)

While the heat was bearing down on me and making daily life difficult, I received a telemarketing call from the Social Security Administration about the "ticket to work". So far as I could tell when the program was inaugurated eight or so years ago, it was not going to do me any good. They are finally getting to me now--just before my 61st birthday and one year before I should be old enough to retire. Sigh.

I am one of those millions of people who watched and listened to Obama accept the nomination for the Presidency of the United States. Just as in Kerry's speech four years earlier all kinds of people where mentioned as people who will be helped if he is elected. I hope that he will be elected, but just as four years ago one group was left out--Americans with disabilities. Where are we? When will we be included? When will our talents be recognized? When will we be able to bring our gifts to the table and join in the feast and the celebration?

As I did four years ago, I cried while listening to the acceptance speech. What has changed? Not much. I hope that no people are being left behind in the evacuation of the Gulf region who will be found drowned in their wheelchairs after the disaster passes. I hope there will be no disabled missing because they were left waiting, as they were in the World Trade Center, until the able-bodied could be evacuated ahead of them.

This country has miles to go before we meet the needs of all of our citizens. I have a dream, as Martin Luther King did, and I hope that I will live long enough to see it met, that disabled people will no longer be forced to live in poverty simply because we are disabled. That the disabled will no longer comprise a large percentage of the homeless population in our major cities. Let us eliminate poverty and make sure that the plans include the disabled. Please.

Tomatoes Like Heat

The plants that have been transplanted into grow bags are thriving. They like heat much more than this old gardener does. Still it is rather thrilling to see what they can do when they are given good soil and sufficient room.

Tomatoes seem to grow exponentially while other things take more time. Roses, for instance have a slower tempo and even the herbs are not exploding out of their pots right now (except for the basils).

I am starting to plan a fall and winter garden--with only about three weeks of summer left. Carrots, radishes and green onions will grow in a long narrow container that a friend gave me last year. I need to find another like it, for I think that "cut and come again lettuces" would also grow in one of these at least for a short while. Those plants would greatly improve my diet.

Monday I came in from an almost perfect afternoon in the garden with my friend and the hummingbird to discover ants in the kitchen. Clean up the ants with 409. Wait. They find another spot. Clean some more. Switch to vinegar in water. Keep cleaning. This morning, nary an ant. The upside is that I now have areas of counter that I haven't seen in years (well months). The downside is that wasn't the way that I was planning to spend my time. Oh well.

Ordering vitamins and other things on line this morning was an eye-opener. The prices for the items aren't too bad but the shipping charges! I think that they are way higher than the actual and that what we really pay for is to get the package into queue fast enough to receive it in timely fashion. Note to self--plan ahead. This is part of the organizational skills of being independent without being able to drive.

It occurred to me that in the interest of getting people out of their cars and saving more costly fuel, we might consider seeing if we could get Congress to legislate a tax deduction for shipping charges. Retailers would hate this. Shippers would love it. People like me would find it most useful

Well, this is straying from the subject of tomatoes. Still I am grateful that my house is still comfortable, that the days are shorter than they were at the beginning of July when it was so hot in my house that I could smell the heat and that paint peeled and that the tomatoes are growing. The object is to have tomatoes in October and November.

Gardening with the Best Assistance--Friends

Today my dear friend who has adopted my yard work came and moved piles of pavers around so that the plants can be put on top of them. I now have a sort of rose arbor going down my ramp and the big, Mr. Lincoln is spotted where it will get more sun. The tomatoes and one basil are in 9 gallon grow bags, which I bought from Plant-It-Earth a few weeks ago. These look like they are going to work. The basil was just transplanted three weeks ago and was already root-bound. I would like to have this basil again next year and plant it in something deep--an old trash can comes to mind--to see how big it would become. Basil tree, anyone?

While my friend and I chatted a hummingbird came to my bower, sipping first on a rose and then a purple malva and finally on the blooming basil flowers. I was going to cut those off, but now I realize that I will need to be sparing so that I do not deprive this lovely creature of scarce food. She was so close that I could see her markings and her feet drawn up under her and hear the clicking of her wings; so close that I could nearly have touched her and so small that I could nearly hold her in the palm of my hand. Exquisite and beautiful, she reminded me to come sit outside just for the joy of it.

My young friend who is going back to school tomorrow came by just long enough to tell me her plans and water my plants.

Yesterday I ordered bulbs online with the hope of having more flowers to photograph in the spring. If the bulbs come, if I get them planted, if the squirrels don't dig them up and eat them!

I can tell when I am playing in the dirt and even more when I am looking at gardening catalogs and web-sites that my ancestors where farmers! I can usually plan enough for at least an acre. I imagine what my ancestors with farms near Adrian, in Michigan and Huntington, in Indiana would make of the web with all the glorious pictures and too many choices, not to mention of me, gardening in the wheelchair with the help of friends.

I am grateful today and looking forward to the evening when it will be cooler.

Gardening with Assistive Technology--the Low-Tech Way

Today I have been playing in the dirt with happiness that I was able too. My helpers are going back to college; the plants need transplanting and the potting soil is stacked up in the patio. I took a flat box and went to the soil with doubled trash bags to hold it and a small pot to scoop it up with. Then I pushed and pulled and tugged and went backwards up my ramp, sometimes with my foot in the box to pull it. It was a thorough workout. Officially, this probably doesn't count as assistive technology, but I have always have had the attitude, if it works, use it.

Two tomato plants are transplanted into grow bags full of this wonderful dirt that looks and feels and smells like it would be absolutely yummy for plants--somewhere between steak and chocolate, or maybe a combination of both. It seemed to my eye that the tomatoes had grown between morning and early evening when I went outside to water them again.

I have been watering by hauling refilled water bottles from the kitchen sink to the outdoors. As I was doing it, I was reminded of one of those movies about life on the prairie and how the women carefully hauled water and dolloped it out to their beloved flowers. A connection to my pioneer foremothers was established here.

Tonight I am grateful for the physical work, the time outdoors and the dirt under my fingernails. Even more, I am grateful for Ibuprofen!

Tomorrow I hope to take pictuers.

Land Ho!

My friend who is out sailing called today from her cell phone to say that land was in sight! It was so wonderful to hear her voice and then she was practically screaming with excitement as a dolphin surfaced nearby. What fun! Vicariously, I was there and could almost see the dolphin myself through her excitement. She has been sending "sail mails" and these are a cool, cool form of communication; technology that unites land and sea.

I am hoping that I can keep my basil plants thriving until she returns and can share a meal of pesto with me. I also hope that the tomatoes will somehow get transplanted and that I will have fruit to share. I suspect that she will be headed to a Farmer's Market in Port Townsend this weekend after weeks of eating things from plastic bags and tins.

She said that as they were sailing toward land, they were being passed by container ships going away. I said, "then commerce is thriving in spite of the economy." She answered, "It seems to be." I can hardly wait to see her blog posts once she has settled into a place that has a connection for her to upload them.

It is good to know that they are safe--and by now ashore. Praise the Lord!

Her blog is linked to the right.

Technology is Here to Stay!

Watching the news last night and watching the buzz building about Barack Obama's choice to announce his running mate by text messages via cell phones left me amused, agog and a little left out since I am maybe the only person on the planet who doesn't own a cell phone! Well, I know that is an exaggeration.

Still it brings up the issue of how the polls are going to be skewed unless they figure out some way to bring in all those people who don't have "land lines", not to mention all those who rarely answer those phones. Obviously, if the poll companies asked people to sign up for text messages that wouldn't mean all that much either since all the most eager supporters of each candidate would sign up. Of course, I have thought for decades that we ought to scrap polls all together and let the process take place. Reporting on it after it happens is news, shaping it by taking polls and reporting on them as though they were news that has always seemed to me to be influencing elections.

Still the "smart phones" are here to stay. I watched someone Google, use a map finder for directions and take phone calls on her new phone last week and was amused by how much I want one just because it so cute! (I couldn't work the keyboard and I couldn't read the screen so this isn't a serious want. It's sort of like infatuation.)

What I want is an automated house. They exist, I know. I already have a marvelous remote controlled honeycomb blind on one window. Now I would like to have the drapes in my bedroom wired so that I can open and close them with a remote. The blinds, unlike all the "instant on" appliances, are controlled by batteries. Now if the batteries could be solar rechargeable,I would be even happier.

A small flashlight that a friend gave me recharges by shaking it. It is a totally different mechanism than anything else I have seen. My father would have loved it! I would like the cordless phone to work this way. Wouldn't it also be lovely if the laptop battery could be rechargeable? (Maybe these already exist.)

I am not really a survivalist, but I do like the idea of technologies that make us independent from monolithic companies and allow us to take better care of ourselves. My friend who is sailing will have a good deal to contribute to this discussion when she returns. Maybe the place to start looking for the kinds of technologies I am wanting are businesses that serve campers and sailors. I found MRE's on a website last fall from a company that specializes in disaster preparedness supplies.

Maybe we should take some of the things that are designed for that use and integrate them into our daily lives. Hand-shaken flashlights, hand-cranked radios and solar-charged batteries.

I'd like a cistern too and then of course, the disaster preparedness kit should have filters to make the water potable.

Power Outage and What to Do in One

Friday night at a few minutes after 5:00 pm the power went out. Four hours and fifteen minutes later the power came back on.

What to do with no power and a warm house getting darker?

Cuss at the PG and E (our local utility). This does not bring the power back on but it lets off enough steam so that when the phone call is made the caller (me) can be polite.

Call the utility company. 8000 households are affected. A large portion of my city. Wow! I am not alone, but that doesn't make it better. No word as to what is causing the outage. Should be back on in less than two hours. Do you want a call to let you know when power is restored? This is not as redundant as it sounds, since it includes the option to get more help if the power has not been restored. I say yes and then realize after hanging up that the answering machine is not going to pick up. It's electric.

Wait. Wait some more. Water plants outside. Outside there are no clocks and time is irrelevant and I can enjoy the plants. Talk to my sister and listen to the ticking of the battery clock. Not even the refrigerator is running.

Need batteries for the battery operated lantern to work and the thing is out of my reach anyway. Give it a better spot and buy batteries. In the meantime, it is getting dark outside. Close sliding screen doors, gather together flashlights and a few other things. It is better to go to the bathroom in the dusk than use flashlights in the dark. Crawl into bed and wait. Now it is too dark to see the clock--should have luminescent battery operated clock--so turn on flashlight to see what time it is. Notice that cordless phone does not work--it is connected to an electric power base. Solar rechargeable batteries would make so much more sense here.

Want to fall asleep and wake up when small night stand lamp comes on and the thrum of the refrigerator running wakes me up. No such luck. No sleep. That is what I get for drinking four cups of coffee in one day--twice as much as usual. Wish I had bought a battery operated clip on light so that I could be reading the book I am reading, Mary Stewart's, The Hollow Hills, book two of her Arthurian saga.

Toss and turn. Realize how boring the power outage is, but give thanks that it is not a heat wave or the middle of winter. Almost fall asleep when something changes and I realize the light is on and the refrigerator running.

Do we take power for granted? Oh, my yes we do! Should we? NO. We should indeed be looking for energy independence, not only for our country, but for areas and individuals as well.

The power outage lasted four and one-quarter hours, much longer than was necessary. I believe that first we waited for the crew to come through rush hour traffic. They should be empowered to use sirens and flashing lights just like other emergency vehicles--they are emergency vehicles. This would have cut the initial waiting time. I am sure the next segment of waiting was due to the fact that the new transformer had to be driven from Sacramento, a two and one-half hour drive, if they made good time. These things should be closer. Profit driven utility companies endanger public safety. Let's change this and take back the economy for the people.

Neighbors posted on the list today that their solar panels give them nine hours of battery back-up. This is at the top of my want list. Next is a gas wall heater in my bedroom. I can dream.

Tonight I am grateful for the lights and the power that allows me to sit here and type and blow of steam. I also hope that my desktop computer survived. I think the surge protector is old. The clock was wrong when I booted it up last night to see if everything was all right.

All in all it was an adventure that I truly did not need and could have done without. I am still here though, so that is good. I guess.