Month: March 2020

The “shelter-at-home” order for all of California began last thursday night at midnight making this day 6.  Of course, I sort of do that all the time … go out only for necessities (other than the senior lunches I’ve been going to on mondays with two friends and two couples who are helping me relearn Spanish, and now those are off until at least the first of April).

And as I said elsewhere … Boxes full of yarn.  Cedar chest full of fiber. Closet full of fabric.  Stacks of books.

Please, oh please, don’t order me to stay home.  There’s nothing to do there.

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Does anyone remember a book from some time ago titled “Love in the Time of Cholera”?  I think a movie was made as well. With the current situation I’m wondering what this time’s book title will be … “Hope in the Time of Corona”?  “Lessons in the Time of Corona”?

Or maybe “Laughs in the Time of Corona” !!! 

Someone could be collecting all the jokes and cartoons being based on this event such as the line of socks in pairs approaching the washer with the leaders saying “Stay in pairs or you’ll wind up as toilet paper.”

Or the headline in our local daily … “Yreka council urges people not to flush anything but toilet paper.”

No further comment.

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Still having earthquakes … latest a 5.0 near Carson City, Nevada.

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But all that said … there isn’t much to tell you.  My social life and volunteer events have been cancelled.  The movie theatre is closed and my movie buddy can’t leave her house either. It’s still too cold to work the ground outdoors.  So I’m spinning etc. and binge watching Brit mysteries, Met free operas, etc.

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To end this abbreviated blog …

My hope is that we are all staying well and not being too bored.

“One of the most important steps you can take to help calm the storm is to not allow yourself to be taken in a flurry of overwrought emotion or despair – thereby accidentally contributing to the swale and the swirl. ”                                                                                                                                                                                             … Clarissa Pinkola Estes

So … ‘til next week …

Sorry to again be late. Oh well …

Like many others, we are on home lockdown.  Local schools have been cancelled until at least 30 March and possibly until fall.  That means Paul will be home schooled and trips to town are limited. I need to go out tomorrow since we are out of chicken pellets.  I’ll go by the library as well.

Stores here are doing curbside delivery and the library is allowing only five people inside at one time with touching restrictions enforced. I have books to return and some waiting for me on hold.

I just read that people whose blood type is A are most likely to catch the virus and I’m A+, so I will be more careful.

Mark is still on call for fire and medical responses, but Kamille is off work (she works at the elementary school), and Tyler is on reduced hours (at the local animal shelter).  All my senior activities are on hold … lunches etc. I don’t yet know what is planned for the food share events. Something will have to be done since this is a POOR county and a lot of folks need help.

Paul is keeping a “corona virus” journal for his grandchildren.  Interesting. Guess he may be catching the genealogy bug.

Other than those changes, we haven’t yet been affected too much.  We always have backup for at least a few weeks since we can usually count on snow closures sometime during the winter. And we have plenty of toilet paper.

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We woke up to snow last sunday.  Second incident in a short time. Rather late in the season,  but what else is new with the current climate behavior. We had snow for the next three days. This morning the outdoor temperature was 41 degrees, so melt is on the way.

However, the late snows have made it impossible to ready the earth for Spring planting.  I’ll need at least another couple of weeks before it will be okay to plant anything. I had to call some suppliers and ask for delayed delivery of the plants I had ordered.  Normal shipping date would be 23 March, but not this year.  

The red maple has started putting on her red spring dress.  I hope the cold mornings and snow hasn’t crippled her for this year.  But I am afraid the plum and apricot are a loss for this year.

The fig that used to live in the solarium had begun to leaf out, but since the family is using pretty much all the space out there, I moved the fig up into my room.  It now lives just to the right of my desk area and has both south and east window exposure. A new shoot is showing and I’ve done a cutting for a new start. I plan on doing some other cuttings of other plants later.

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In addition to the last winter-like weather and the virus shutdowns, we’ve started having earthquakes.  There was one to the southwest of the Mountain and several off the coast. Since none was larger than 5.6, I didn’t feel any of them.  

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For three days during the latest snows, I didn’t let the chickens out of their house.  Had I opened their door they wouldn’t have come out anyhow. As a result, egg production was down. 

I did open their door this morning, and at the moment they are clustered in a patch of sunlight.

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I think I have mentioned tourist contamination of want-to-see places and suggested that maybe virtual travel could be a solution.  Seems I wasn’t the only one thinking along those lines. I see on the net that virtual tours of many sites are appearing. And I would guess film makers are out doing shoots for virtual travel (and apocalypse films). Great! Maybe now I will find the time for some “traveling”.

Mark and my trip to see the Met production of “The Flying Dutchman” was cancelled.  The Met, like Broadway, is dark for the rest of the season. However, both the Met and Broadway are streaming shows, so I will get to see some I would never have seen otherwise … some past opera productions (although not last year’s “Rigoletto”), “Sweeny Todd”, “Company” (I did see this in LA years ago), “Kiss Me Kate” (The 1999 version), and a slew of others.

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I do hope you are all staying well and protected, and I suggest you file the following away to remember when this crisis is past.

According to the Great Leader … during this pandemic “people are dying who never died before.” 

So … ‘til next week …

The Moon came full while close to Earth. 

Mercury has been retrograde.

Has anybody noticed?

Things stayed much the same around here.  Chaotic …

One of the white hens found a new way out of the day yard  and was lost to a predator. Replace fencing has moved up on the to-do list.

A niece asked for family history but I’ve lost her email so that is in abeyance.

Current book was a good read, but heavy going.  I have trouble reading about or watching deliberate cruelty.  I still have not seen the last of the Helen Hunt movie “The Piano”. I got up and left when it became obvious her husband was going to mutilate her hands.

We awoke to unexpected snow last weekend.

My spinning wheel began complaining about not having received her annual “spa” time for too many years.

So … chaos.

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No more snow but temperatures are staying low.  33 degrees this morning with a high of only 48 expected.  Don’t get me wrong. 48 ain’t bad. It just means we aren’t getting close to planting time yet.  I have ordered some plants which are due to arrive in two weeks. I guess I’ll be making room for them someplace in the house to wait awhile before transplanting.

I ordered from High Country Gardens.  They raise their plants for this area in the high country of New Mexico so they are well suited to my growing conditions.  This year they have several new native plants which are both deer and rabbit repellent, so I splurged. All part of my reworking/refurbishing the courtyard and drying yard area.  I’m concentrating (in addition to herbs) on plants to attract hummers. bees, and butterflies.

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I took Matilda to a woodworking friend for her spa time. His first move was to take her all apart. He sent me a picture and wow … pieces all over the place. But she will work better when she comes home and most likely feel better. I’ll be able to tell if that’s so by her “talk” when we start spinning again. I have several pieces of beautiful roving waiting.

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Monday lunches are increasingly becoming something which I anticipate.  I’ve made some nice friends there in addition to the two with whom I have been volunteering at the food share programs.  They are two couples who are from Mexico and so are Spanish speakers as well as fully conversant in English (I am more and more convinced American dependence on English only is self-defeating).  They laugh at my Spanish attempts and that’s fine because the laughs are kind and they explain reasons to me thereby helping me learn. Each week I learn a bit more.

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The monthly meeting of the landowners’ association was last night.  There are several things in the fire … interaction with the fire company, street addresses, buildings other than residences on parcels,  a lawsuit against a truck stop right next to one of the subdivision’s boundaries, timber harvests in the area, participation in a new program to enhance understanding and implementation of fire protection action, a request from the local community television agency for a monthly report on news from Hammond Ranch, use of Ranch residences as training sites for firefighters (instruction using a treasure hunt model … more about that as it develops) … and that’s all I can think of right now.  I’m involved in all of them, at least a little, since I’m the association secretary.

I can see I will be making trips to Yreka to consult with and ask questions of several County departments.  I hate going to Yreka for just one thing, so coordinating appointments will be a challenge. After all, challenges keep folks my age on their toes, right?  Maybe I’ll aim for mondays and fridays since the truck loaded with fresh produce from the central valley is there on those days. 

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Mornings are once again dark when Kamille and Paul leave.  But evenings are still light enough to read past 7:30.

And speaking of reading … next on my list is another of the turn-of-the-century mysteries set in Manhattan.  Very light reading and fun. Leads are a midwife and an Irish copper.  

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And here’s a suggestion for those of us who have anxiety attacks …

Silence is not mute. I’ve begun to realize that you can listen and learn from it.  It has a quality and a dimension all its own, a strange and beautiful texture.  It talks to me and it will talk to you as well. … Chaim Potok

So … ‘til next week …

I’m a reader (no surprise there, right?).  However, I’m a bit behind all those readers who are part of the PBS and the “Now Read This” groups.  I just began reading “Overstory”.

The other thing I know you know is that I treasure the times an author can set me back on my tush with a single sentence … so …

“There are colours in his spectrum that no one else can see.”

Or even more than one sentence …

“His eyes fill with tears.  He shrugs. They think he stole.  They can’t believe a kid worked for months on an original idea, for no reason at all except the pleasure of looking until you see something.”

And I’m on only page 78.  This looks to be a good read.

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The weather has stayed cool, but not really winter.  I saw the return of our first hummer last thursday. It is red headed.  We wonder if it is the same alpha male as in the past. Does anyone know the lifespan of hummers?

At any rate, the feeders have all been sterilized and four have been filled and hung ready for visitors.  When Paul is home and sees a hummer, he calls me to share the scene. 

I’d like to arrange a bird bath as well this year. 

Then sunday morning we woke to 28º and ground covered with a skiff of snow.
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We still have nineteen hens averaging 14-15 eggs a day.  They are paying for their feed as well as providing all the eggs the family needs.

Expanding their scratch yard is on the summer to-do list as is putting the current straw floor cover onto the compost pile and replacing it with fresh straw.

Another project, as I have mentioned previously, is to repair the courtyard area for summer use.  I mention it again in order to remind myself. The current temperature in the morning is still too close to freezing for me to spend time out there early, but I’m looking at things I can do later in the day as preparation for the heavy work when it warms up a bit.  I need to tap the spot on the side of the road where there are slabs of flat stones which I want to use on the entrance path, and prepare an area for the start of the herb garden.  

If I keep writing these chores down I hope it will keep jabbing my memory as the weather turns.  Spinning and reading can put me into a place where I am gone to this world for a time and when I come back …

Oh well …
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The local Firefighters’ Association (which is composed of both firefighters and community members who support the firefighters) used to handle a beer booth at the county fair each August.  It was lucrative … more than $10,000 for four and a half days’ work.  

But the company and its accompanying association have been fraught with controversy.

Many years ago, when the fire company was formed as a community volunteer group, there was a schism between those who thought anyone who paid tax (the people had voted for a small supportive fire tax) should have a say in who served on the Board of Directors and those who thought only firefighters should be involved.  It led to what amounted to a takeover by the then Chief and his cohorts.  

Now, these years later, the company is being re-formed after being decimated as a result of said chief and cohorts, and an effort is being made to revitalize the FireFighters’ Association.  A bid is being placed to once again handle the beer booth. That will require at least twenty volunteers and there are fewer than a dozen members of the association, including seven or eight firefighters who can’t man the booth since they are on call for fighting fires.

I am in support of the new company and decided to get involved.  So far I volunteered for no more than a four hour shift and have recruited fourteen others.  I also lined up someone to send emails to all residents of the fire district to see if we can get enough volunteers to raise the ten thousand plus.

The fair is the first week in August.  I think it can be done. I’ll keep you up to date as this affair proceeds.
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Well, the primary is over in California and I’m a bit miffed at the Democrats.  The central committee seems to be heavy with old, white, male politicians. And when candidates pull out at the last minute it invalidates the ballots of those who have already voted for them.  Doesn’t seem fair.

Try to stay positive.

What would clear-headed pragmatism be worth if it weren’t in the pursuit of shadowy, intangible dreams, hopes and desires? Stay open to beauty, optimism, and hope.

So … ‘til next week …

P.S.  I have a post from a cousin I want to share but I’m still having trouble loading photos.  Stand by …