Countryside sky

So yesterday we had exciting weather. Thunder, hail, and rain about lunch time, then the sky cleared up in time for a partial solar eclipse in the afternoon. I didn't know about it at the time, but in Longview, Washington, about 200 miles south of me, there even was a tornado. Those happen rarely in Washington. This is only the second one I've ever heard of.

When I was driving home from work, the post-storm sky was going through rapid changes, with stunning cloudscapes and even a rainbow. I pulled off onto a side road (Abbot Road, off the Hannegan, if you're local) and took some pictures.



Rainbow over the harvested field.



Dark sky.



The sky was dark, but everything on the ground was bright -- clean from the rain and with the westering sun making it glow.



The edge of the dark clouds.



The farm glowing against the louring sky.



A watery effect because the car window on that side had raindrops on it.

Beauty

P. Allen Smith, whose TV series "Garden Home," I enjoyed, has a Facebook page, and he linked to this blog entry  a woman wrote about her garden. She starts out recounting a time when some women said that their garden was strictly utilitarian and they didn't waste resources on things that weren't edible. So she wrote a blog about why she gardens and loves her garden, which has both edible and ornamental plants.

In Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, the priest who saves Jean Valjean from going back to prison has a garden in which 3/4s was for vegetables and 1/4 was for flowers. His housekeeper told him that 1/4 plot was useless and that it would be better to grow salads then bouquets. He replied that she was mistaken and said, "The beautiful is as useful as the useful." And after a pause he added, "More so, perhaps."



Beauty is an intrinsic and valuable part of God's creation. When we plant flowers and enjoy them, we honor him.

Heat and humidity

I remarked earlier that it seemed quite warm today for mid-October. When I went to church this evening, when I sat in the fireside room, where we were meeting, I found myself feeling too warm and coated with sweat. I was embarrassed during the shake hands greeting time for fear I looked grossly sweaty. After a while I felt a little better, but always quite warm. At my small group meeting, toward the end, I was sweating again.

I was wondering, is it really hot? Or am I having hot flashes? Or maybe too much thyroid medicine?

When I got outside the wind was blowing harder than ever--it's been blowing all day, which makes it tolerable outdoors--and some large raindrops were scattered in with the wind.

By the time I got home, after 9:30 p.m., and looked up local weather reports, the current temperatures for my town were innocuous numbers in the low 60s (Fahrenheit). I finally found a site that said what had happened earlier in the day, and it turns out today's high temperature was 76.5 at around 3:00 p.m. At 6:00 p.m., when church started, it was still almost 70 degrees, and as my small group was winding down it was still almost 67 degrees, and the humidity was getting up near 80%. So, pretty gross.

About now, the temperature is down to just a little over 61 degrees, but the humidity has climbed to 94%.

Fortunately, the forecast is for cooler weather starting tomorrow, also rain, maybe even thunder, which is exciting in this region because rare.

Autumn

Today was a rather warm day for mid-October, but still had a feeling of fall because of clouds, wind, and blowing leaves. Yesterday I borrowed two of my niece's children to help me do some clean-up around the yard and deck.  One of the things I did was throw away all the annuals I had bought but never planted. This past summer was not a good one for beautifying my deck or growing flowers. But now that is behind me. Ahead is the dormant season, and by the time spring comes I may have regenerated the desire to grow flowers.

This afternoon I mowed the lawn. The grass has gotten greener and lusher since the weather cooled off and we got a little rain. Also there were leaves all over the back yard, so wherever I mowed I left a path behind me. I like that. I don't pick up the leaves and grass as I mow, but I have blades on the mower that chop them up to fertilize the lawn. It was a gorgeous day to be outside.

Now I'm back inside and the only fly in my ointment, so to speak, is that I have a fairly severe infestation of fruit flies in my kitchen. So gross. I will have to address that problem at a later date because right now I have to feed and walk the dog, take a shower to wash off the smell of lawnmower fumes, then go to the evening worship service at my church, and then to my small group. The small group right now is my chief source of spiritual help.

Survival

Q: Where was Moses when the lights went out?

A: In the dark.

Yesterday my power was out for about four or five hours. I got home from work later than usual because I had stopped at the grocery store on the way. As I turned into my cul-de-sac, I was following a PSE truck. I went around it to pull into my driveway, where I halted and pushed the button on the automatic garage-door opener on my visor. No response. Push. No response. Hm. I knew the battery was okay because the light on the device went on with each push.

I got out of my car and saw that no lights were on in my house or any of my neighbors' houses. The PSE truck had disgorged a workman who was approaching some kind of utility box on my neighbor's property. "Is the power out?" I asked. He seemed to look at me cautiously. "Yes," he replied after a pause.

I went inside my home and found my way through the gloom to let my dog out of his box. He starts to bark as soon as I put my key in the door. My upstairs neighbors must always know when I get home. Barkity bark bark. Yappity yap yap. I was flipping switches everywhere I went so that when the power came on I would know.

As it turned out, I had a long time to wait. I lit a candle, pondering the saying, "It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness" in the context of this comic strip:



Good old "Peanuts."

I opened up the computer I am now writing on, and the battery was fully charged. However, I could not get online because I could not connect to my wireless. The troubleshooter told me to turn my router on and off.

So I went on my cell phone. First I called my parents to chat about the situation. Then I went online, which always uses up the battery quickly. I made a post or two about the outage on Facebook and visited the PSE site, where I discovered it was a very tiny outage, affecting an estimated 7 customers. Soon my phone battery went dead, so I read materials already loaded onto my Kindle.

I made a couple trips down the hall to what my mother calls "that little room," but I did not flush the toilet. Because I am semi-below ground level, the downstairs where I live requires a pump to drain water. I don't know what might have happened had I flushed, but I imagine it would not have been pleasant.

Around 11:30, 11:35, the lights came on and the refrigerator started to hum. Just in time for me to turn the lights off and go to bed (after flushing the toilet).

This morning when I went outside to walk the dog, my sprinkler system was cycling through its business. I had turned the system off this spring, deciding to postpone learning how to operate it until next year. But I found the manual and it said that after a power outage it will default to a once-a-day schedule eight hours after power is restored. I think I will get a professional in to get it drained and shut down for winter so that if we have any power outages then I won't have complications involving frozen pipes. For the moment, I just turned it off again. I think. I'll know for sure tomorrow morning.

So that's just about the biggest adventure that's happened to me in a long time. Glad I made it through.

Lapping it up

So here I am, using my laptop on top of my lap, exactly as the name promises. I am sitting in my recliner, with my feet up, using the computer. This is the life. It's practically a beer commercial. I remember one where guys drove big trucks, caught big fish, camped out in the wild, and, of course, drank a specific brand of beer, and the tag was, "It just doesn't get any better than this."

I'm looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow. This week I've struggled with over-sleeping. Since tomorrow is Saturday, I can oversleep with no consequences. I do have to get out there and find some birthday presents for a boy who's turning 15. We have a party (well, just a family get-together) at 2:00.

And now, good-night.

Almost

So tomorrow is Friday. That's nice. That's very nice.

Snoozer

Goodness, I'm tired.


Lord Caversham.  Well, sir! what are you doing here?  Wasting your life as usual!  You should be in bed, sir.  You keep too late hours!  I heard of you the other night at Lady Rufford’s dancing till four o’clock in the morning!

Lord Goring.  Only a quarter to four, father....


Lord Goring.  You should go to bed, Miss Mabel.

Mabel Chiltern.  Lord Goring!

Lord Goring.  My father told me to go to bed an hour ago.  I don’t see why I shouldn’t give you the same advice.  I always pass on good advice.  It is the only thing to do with it.  It is never of any use to oneself.

Quiet night

I've closed and locked the door for the night. It gives me a feeling of security to be inside my cozy home -- light, warm, quiet -- with the rest of the world -- dark, cold, windy -- outside. Tonight I am of a mind to go to sleep early.

The Lord Almighty grant us a peaceful night and a perfect end. Amen.

Huzzah

My new computer is here, and I'm using it. It will take a little getting used to, but it's already better than holding my Kindle up to my nose while trying to type on a tiny touch-screen keyboard.

After I came home from work, and before I unboxed the new computer, I mowed the lawn. The days are getting shorter, so that by the time I was done it was dusk if not later. I hope I didn't miss any large patches in the gloom. I did the front yard first, so that the most public area would look the best. For the back yard, I was zooming around trying to finish before dark.

Reminds me of a joke some guys used to make many years ago when I worked at a publisher of automotive information. British cars, such as Jaguars, had a reputation of needing lots of repairs. The manufacturer of the electrical systems for these cars was Lucas Electric, and its reputation was the same. The guys said that Lucas workers had the motto: "A good day's work and home before dark."

Well, speaking of the dark, it's almost time for bed. As Bridget Jones said, "I'm headed for Bedfordshire." Or as the children's joke goes (in houses where kids know Bible stories), "Shadrach, Meshach, and To-bed-we-go." Or as my maternal grandmother used to say, "I think I'll hit the hay." Or as Samuel Pepys used to record in his diary, "And so to bed."

The ease of typing renders me garrulous.

En route

I have been notified that my  computer  has  shipped. Perhaps I will even receive  it tomorrow. I'm  looking forward to having a  keyboard  again.  This typing on the screen just isn't cutting it.

I remember watching a scene in a  Clint Eastwood  movie --  probably  Dirty Harry -- in which Eastwood is  playing pool while his workplace  superior yells at him. At the end of a lengthy tirade, Eastwood says, "I got one thing to say....Your mouthwash ain't cutting it."

Anticipation

If have ordered a new computer, but it will take about three weeks to arrive. Meanwhile, blogging from my Kindle is not as smooth as working with a keyboard. I just have to wait for better times.

Hair today

So I wimped out. The young lady who does my hair gave me a reminder call that I had an appointment Saturday morning, and that was enough to push me over the edge. After talking to my sister-in-law, I decided not to attend the Walk to Defeat ALS. Instead I got my hair done. It's a becoming shade of dark red now.

My computer crasheth

My PC seems to have given up the ghost. I'm doing this on my Kindle. I have to examine my bank account and determine my next move.

Year after year

Every September is the Walk to Defeat ALS in Bellingham. I've been there eight times now, and next weekend will be the ninth time, God willing. This year my immediate family did not set up our own team because, dreadfully, terribly, horribly, there is another family team we can join, that of my cousin who died of ALS last year.

Some years I have been the one to set up a team online at the ALS website. Always I do a moderate amount of fundraising. But this year I've been putting off even signing up at all. Every time I think about it, I feel an aversion, and I realize that the thought of it is depressing.

This evening, as I was walking my dog around the back yard, I wondered why I should find the idea of the Walk depressing, and the thought came into my head, Year after year I walk, but he's still dead.

He being my brother. I'm tired of my brother being dead. I've had enough of that.

The first time I participated in the Walk, in 2006, he was there.



He was there, but he had less than two months left to live. All the years since then, he's been gone.

2007



2008



2009



2010



2011



2012



2013



And, next week, 2014. Still gone.

I believe in the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting. Someday we'll walk together, again, forever. (But the wait feels long.)

Crisp

Fall was in the air today, for which I was heartily thankful. Windy, with leaves blowing around. There's something wild and exciting about that. I did hear a rumor of hot weather again this weekend, but I hope it's not true.

The cool sequester'd vale

The long, hot summer drags on. Yesterday I was so hot! During the night I woke up feeling too warm to sleep, so on my cell phone I looked up Lynden weather. It said that Sunday was predicted to be much cooler than Saturday--yet the Sunday predicted high is over 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Saturday it was over 90! For my international readers who think in Celsius, that means that today it is going to be about 27 degrees and yesterday it was about 32 degrees. High humidity yesterday, too.

No wonder I felt crabby and irritable in the afternoon. Even my dog was getting on my nerves.

Right now on Sunday morning, it feels fairly pleasant indoors with the windows open. I am once again missing church. It's just so tempting to sleep in and have a slow, quiet Sunday morning by myself.

This is how I feel about almost every gathering except family:



I don't mind socializing at work, although even there I talk more to off-the-cuff knots of 3-4 people than at the full staff meeting. At church, I keep moving through the after-church coffee time, but I am happy to get together with my small group. And I like having extended brunch with one close friend, where we talk for hours. But I must say that I do love staying home alone and sometimes wish I could do it far more often, though I suspect it's a wholesome discipline for me to have to go out and interact with others.

My longing both for quiet and solitude and for cooler weather makes me realize why I so like these lines from Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard:

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

I want to keep the noiseless tenor of my way along the cool, sequestered vale of life, far from the madding crowd.

New possessions

There are two things I've bought lately that have pleased me very much.

A few weeks ago I ordered a silver bracelet from Monastery Greetings. It has the most famous saying of Julian of Norwich stamped on it:



"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." From the 13th revelation of the Revelations of Divine Love of Julian of Norwich:

But Jesus, who in this Vision informed me of all that is needful to me, answered by this word and said: It behoved that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

or:

Synne is behovabil, but al shal be wel and al shal be wel and all manner of thyng shal be wele.

I first encountered this saying in college, in a seminar on T.S. Eliot. In Little Gidding, one of his Four Quartets, he quotes it. I always liked the singing, round feel of it, as well as finding it a comforting saying.

For the past two years, almost, I've been looking for a renter for the upstairs of my house, so that I can continue to live here. In July, that was accomplished, so in August I bought myself this bracelet as a celebration.

The second new possession, which I just bought this week, is an oak sideboard for in my kitchen.



My kitchen has less than ample counter and cupboard space, so I was looking for such a piece of furniture. I searched the local craigslist under "buffet table," but realized from the search results that I needed to look for a "sideboard." One of the first things that came up was this beautiful oak sideboard.

I had received an oak table from my parents when they moved into their retirement home, and I felt that this sideboard would go with it perfectly. I wanted it so badly that I almost wanted to pray for it, but I didn't know if it would be right to pray for a material possession just because it is beautiful. Anyway, the Lord blessed me with the ability to buy it, and with dear family members who helped me move it into my house, and I love it.

So I hope I am not materialistic to love these things. Instead I will claim the rabbinic saying that God will hold us accountable for every good thing he provided that we did not enjoy.

Knitting up that old ravell'd sleave of care

Tonight I hope to sleep the night through and wake refreshed. Lately, I either don't fall asleep or fall asleep for a few hours then wake up for a few. It doesn't help that I can't resist turning on my phone and opening my Kindle to see if anyone in my family has written an e-mail or if any friend has either posted something on Facebook or "liked" a post of mine.

I got back out my light-thingy, as the technical jargon goes, to help regularize my sleep schedule.



After I came back from my travels in April, I had favorable jet lag, and then the days started getting wonderfully long and the mornings beautifully light. Now the sun does not come up quite as early, and it's been a long time since I travelled into an earlier time zone, so I need to train myself to wake up again with this light.

It has a timer so that the light turns on after my alarm (aka my cell phone) rings. I see that and think, "Oh, good, now I can wake up," then my eyes roll up in my head and I start snoring. Fortunately I have a small furry backup alarm that sticks its nose in my face and perhaps even gives me a hearty kiss. Being woken by a kiss makes me just like Sleeping Beauty.

Anyway, I am mostly getting up on time, but I want to get up more easily and feel less tired during the day, so I'm trying to train my body to sleep for 8 or more hours a night. Here I go.

Mowed the lawn

That always gives me a sense of accomplishment.

Ordinary time

In the past two weeks, I've had beloved visitors, first my brother then my sister and her husband. I've been relaxing and enjoying the family time.



Yesterday, my sister and her husband left, bringing a close to the family visits for a while--of family out of town that is; the nearby family is still get-at-able. Now the festive season is over, and I return to ordinary time. Fortunately--or I should say providentially--my ordinary life is one that I enjoy.



Today I went back to work. A good number of my co-workers are on vacation, so it was a relatively quiet day, a good day to clear paperwork off my desk. Over the next few days, co-workers will return, and soon work will be busy. That's good, too.

So I guess I have many blessings to count.

All living things are messy

A cousin of mine put up a quote on Facebook by someone named William Leal: "It's all messy. The hair. The bed. The words. The heart. Life..."  It reminded me of something I used to say to myself at a certain stage in life, which was, "All living things are messy." If you have living plants in your house instead of fake ones, the pots will leak when you water the plants and ruin rugs and wood finishes. If you have a dog or cat instead of a stuffed animal, the dog or cat will pee on the carpet, poo on the floor, vomit on the upholstery, and shed their hair on every surface in the house. (Also, I can testify, smear their nose on every window in your car.) Babies are messier than dolls. You and I are messy. We do all the same things dogs and babies do, albeit in a more contained fashion. (Okay, maybe we don't smear our noses on the car windows.) So, if we are going to have any living things in our lives--plants, animals, friends, family--we will always have messes. And if we are alive, we will be messy.

And so to bed

Today I mowed the lawn.

I was going to write more about my day, and although the events were mundane, the writing would have been light and amusing, even witty. Take my word for it.

But I'm kind of tired, so forget it. Instead, good-night.

Rain and Wind

I guess I was so tired the last time I posted that I took a 2-week break. We had a lengthy spell (several weeks) of hot weather (hot for Northwest Washington), but today we're getting well soaked with rain. That'll green up the lawn again.

My dad seems to be doing fine with his pacemaker.

I'm having good developments in my own life, but some of my friends and relatives are facing challenges. I have lots of reasons to pray for lots of people. I told one of them last Saturday night we should remember that when we don't know what to pray for the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with groans too deep for words. Then the next day I went to church, and here was the text:

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God. (Romans 8:26-27)

The preacher pointed out that the text does not assume that most of the time we do know what to pray for but on those occasions when we don't the Holy Spirit intercedes for us; rather, it says simply, "We do not know what we ought to pray for." That's our state of being. And all the time the Spirit intercedes.

He also pointed out the Trinity in this passage: God the Father is listening to our prayers, God the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness and intercedes for us in accordance with God's own will, and God the Son, Jesus Christ, is "he who searches our heart" (cross reference Revelation 2:3: "I am he who searches hearts and minds"). The preacher suggested much of our praying should be listening for the Spirit to teach us the will of God so that we can pray for it. Also, that God chooses to act through the prayers of his saints -- thus we are his partners in accomplishing his will.

Good stuff.

Courage

Sooooooooooooooooooo tired. Saturday took my dad to the emergency room, and yesterday he had a pacemaker implanted to regulate his heartbeat. Today he came home. I've been spending a lot of time away from home, either at the hospital or with my mom at my folks' place. My sister-in-law (my hero) is still with my parents tonight.

I can remember an era when my bedtime was 8:30 p.m. I'm going to revisit that scene.

Happy Fourth

This evening I had a very relaxed, low-key celebration of the USA's Independence Day. My dad and mom came over, and so did my sister-in-law, and I made dinner: spaghetti, salad, warm French bread with butter. The spaghetti sauce was Prego traditional; I browned some mild Italian sausage meat to put in it. The French bread I simply buttered generously, wrapped in foil, and warmed up in the oven. My sister-in-law can't digest garlic, so I didn't make it garlic bread. The salad was a pre-made green salad, and I put out some different dressings, some croutons, and some sunflower seeds to put on it. For dessert, we had vanilla ice cream with raspberries and blueberries on it, to strike the red, white, and blue note. (I added chocolate syrup to mine, which has no symbolic significance. I just like chocolate.) The berries were local and in-season. The ice cream was from a local dairy business, Edaleen. My dad likes their ice cream the best, and he ought to know because he grew up on a dairy farm.

I had bought a nice Chianti to go with the spaghetti. While I was opening the bottle, I broke the cork, so that half was still left in the neck of the bottle. I went back in with the corkscrew, and when I managed to pull the remaining cork out, some wine splooshed out of the bottle, with some drops going on the floor and a few on my shirt. While sitting at the table, I at one point dipped my sleeve into the sauce on my plate. And during dessert, as I discovered afterward, I dribbled some chocolate on the neckline of my shirt and even inside my shirt on my bra. So, basically a typical meal for me.

My shirt and bra are in the washing machine even now.

Now it's later in the evening, and fireworks are popping all over the neighborhood. My dog, who is utterly neurotic about some things -- such as being left alone -- has no response at all to the booms and bangs. He is sleeping quietly.

Flowers, saint

I put two pots of New Guinea impatiens behind Saint Francis.



I think it looks nice.

Bob, bob, bobbin'

Two robins on the lawn.



That's all.

Requesting quiet

This afternoon I went to the grocery store (Food Pavilion) and while I was shopping I noticed that the piped-in store music was instrumental and melodic, older tunes that I recognized but that were from my parents' era, sort of big-bandish. It was almost like Muzak, the store music of my youth. I liked it.

There are times when I'm in a grocery store and the music is so pounding that I think, Please. We're rocking out a bit too much, here.

Coincidentally, I recently read an article about supermarket music that linked to a much longer article by Mark Steyn about Alan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind. It contains this paragraph:

But Bloom is writing about rock music the way someone from the pre-rock generation experiences it. You’ve no interest in the stuff, you don’t buy the albums, you don’t tune to the radio stations, you would never knowingly seek out a rock and roll experience—and yet it’s all around you. You go to buy some socks, and it’s playing in the store. You get on the red eye to Heathrow, and they pump it into the cabin before you take off. I was filling up at a gas station the other day and I noticed that outside, at the pump, they now pipe pop music at you. This is one of the most constant forms of cultural dislocation anybody of the pre-Bloom generation faces: Most of us have prejudices: we may not like ballet or golf, but we don’t have to worry about going to the deli and ordering a ham on rye while some ninny in tights prances around us or a fellow in plus-fours tries to chip it out of the rough behind the salad bar. Yet, in the course of a day, any number of non-rock-related transactions are accompanied by rock music. I was at the airport last week, sitting at the gate, and over the transom some woman was singing about having two lovers and being very happy about it. And we all sat there as if it’s perfectly routine. To the pre-Bloom generation, it’s very weird—though, as he notes, “It may well be that a society’s greatest madness seems normal to itself.” Whether or not rock music is the soundtrack for the age that its more ambitious proponents tout it as, it’s a literal soundtrack: it’s like being in a movie with a really bad score.

I don't like loudness in general. I dislike it in restaurants when music plays so loudly that you have to bellow at the friends with whom you dine. It's not just loud music; I like less noise in general. I commute about half and hour each direction to work, and I generally don't turn on the radio. Even audio recordings of books get on my nerves after a while--this voice going on and on.

So I guess my attitude toward background music is: If you must have it, then let it be as unintrusive as possible.

Breather

This evening I planted some things. First, three snapdragons by the mailbox post.



I saw these at Rite-Aid a  couple days ago, and they were such a beautiful glowing red color I couldn't resist. Some of them were flopping over, but I chose the three most upright ones there.

Then, two yellow rudbeckia.



My sister-in-law has some flowers much like this that she calls "brown-eyed Betty." I'm not sure mine are exactly the same, but they're close.

Next, I planted this purple salvia splendens.



I chose this one for its intense color, too.

All those were near the mailbox. Next, alongside the east side of the house, I planted two ornamental grass clumps of a kind called "sedge."





They were super-duper root-bound, so I hope they settle in okay. I tried to "stimulate" the roots (i.e., tear them loose) before I planted them, but they were really packed.

Finally, I planted five "woolly" sage plants by the guest room window.



In the spring, I had a big bush torn out of that place. It was a pretty bush, but I didn't want the window completely covered up, which it was doing.

Tomorrow I have guests coming, including my elderly parents, who both walk with canes, so I want to trim these bushes that are making the steps into an obstacle course.



However, I needed a break, so I came inside, drank lots of water, and edited these pictures, looked at Facebook, and so on until now it's too dark to work outside, so I'll have to do the trimming tomorrow. Meanwhile, there are plenty of tasks inside that I can do, most notably loading the dishwasher full of the dishes that are currently crowding my counter and sink. The wonderful thing about my home (dis)organization is that if you ever want to do housework, there are always plenty of jobs ready to do.

Tricky

They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. But sometimes they invent goofy ones. By doing lots of mental arithmetic (at which I stink), I've estimated that my dog may very well be 10 years old. Incredible!

[Reminds me of a Jeeves/Wodehouse snippet:

"Incredulous!" I said.

"I believe you mean 'incredible,' sir," said Jeeves.

Or something like that.]*

Anyway, my dog has, thus late in life, developed a taste for tissue. Bathroom tissue. Facial tissue. Or, for something with a bit more roughage, paper towels and napkins. It started when he used to chew up such items when they were infused with food, oil, or nameless substances, but now he doesn't care whether the paper is flavored or plain, he just likes to chew on it and ingest shreds of it (evidence of which he later presents while we're on our walks).

But here's the tricky part. He attempts, sometimes successfully, to pull kleenex out of the box. And he has learned to unroll toilet paper. I may be sitting in the living room or kitchen, and I'll hear him nosing around down the hallway, and when I walk there I find a long strip of toilet paper extending from the spindle in the bathroom across the hall into the library or my bedroom.

On the one hand, for a dog, it takes some intelligence to figure out how to pull tissues from the pop-up box and unroll toilet paper from the hanger. On the other hand, both are darn silly behaviors, consistent with a certain level of stupidity.

Smart or stupid? You decide.

*

Highly accomplished

Good weekend. I planted a good number of flowers. Here are the striped petunias in the new plant hanger, both of which I bought at Van Wingerden's last weekend:



Isn't that pretty?

I put these wall flowers on either side of my door. They tend to grow in odd shapes, but the flowers are delightfully fragrant:



And I put these gorgeous pansies in a worthy pot:



You can also see the mowed lawn in the background, which is another accomplishment. Yay, me.

And I hung up this and some other plaques or whatever they may be called:



All that work was on Saturday. I have been having a quiet Sunday. I sat out on the deck for a while this afternoon but kept dozing off, so came inside to sleep more comfortably on the couch. Now it's evening. It looks kind of windy and dark outside. I wonder if it will rain. I was out walking my dog around the yard about an hour or so ago, and the air temperature is warm; however, I have all the doors and windows shut because the wind puts stuff in the air that kicks off my allergies.

Early in the a.m.

A slightly overcast morning. I'm awake early, which is nice. I woke up naturally. Yesterday and the day before, I was so sleepy during my commute that I went to bed early both evenings. So now I must be caught up. I'm having a cup of coffee in the extra half hour I now have. A quiet morning with coffee. What could be better?

Perhaps this evening I will finally mow the lawn. We've been having such lovely sunny dry weather that I am safe to procrastinate so, being tired, that's what I've done the last two evenings after work. I've intended to mow but then not done so. No rain is in the forecast until Sunday, so I can wait as long as until Saturday evening. No pressure.

Time, time, time. Everything takes time, and time is limited.

A little later: What was I raving about when I said it was overcast? When I went out to walk the dog, the sky was blue from end to end, not a trace of cloud. My impression of darkness when I looked out the window must have just been that it was still so early that there were shadows on the lawn.

Tinkling

This evening I finally finished cleaning out the little pool and set up the manneken pis. It was too dark to take a picture by the time I finished, but light enough to work. This is a delightful time of year, close to summer solstice, when the days are so long that I can work outside until 9:00 p.m.

I cleaned the pool, wiping it out with vinegar water to get rid of any mold or whatever might be there. Then I filled it with fresh, clear water and set up the little peeing-boy fountain. Plugged it in, and everything worked great right off. I had swept the pavers around the pool, and I planted some yellow begonias and white bacopa in a shallow pot and set it next to the water. I found my metal frog and placed it in position by the edge of the pool, and I re-hung the strawberry basket, which I had removed while I was working there (so I wouldn't knock it around with my head).

There's something particularly sweet about the sound of water splashing at dusk.

I feel so efficient

I accomplished a fair amount today. I met a friend in Birch Bay for breakfast. The road between Lynden and Birch Bay has a construction area where the road is closed, and I figured out an efficient way to get around it. On my way home again, I stopped at Van Wingerden nursery and made some satisfactory purchases of flowers and a hanging pot. I remembered to go to the drug store and pick up my prescription refills. (My insurance plan changes tomorrow, June 1, and I will not immediately have a new card, which would complicate my pharmacy purchases.) I visited with my folks. I took out the garbage. I planted some flowers. I did several loads of laundry. I washed my hair.

Another paving stone

Well, and today when I came home I abandoned my intention to mow the lawn. I decided to wait until Saturday. It's supposed to rain tonight but stop by the weekend.

Good intentions

Every spring a big job out on the deck is to empty out the little pool, clean it, and refill it with clean water so that the little manneken pis can, well, pis.



Every winter the pool fills up with leaves that decompose, so the water-leaf mixture becomes black and sludgy. When I empty it out, I take the water-leaves out bucket by bucket and dump them over the retaining wall onto the lawn. Later the messy leaves get picked up by the lawn mower.

This weekend is Memorial Day, and my family will come over on Monday. I want the deck and yard to be nice. I want to empty the pond, then mow the lawn so that everything is tidy.

The lawn is ready to be mowed, so I decided that when I got home this evening I would empty and clean the pool, then tomorrow I can mow. That was my firm plan all day, right until I came home from work and, as I was approaching my door, I looked at the pool and thought, "No way."

So maybe I'll just have to mow tomorrow and do the pool on Friday and just have messy leaves or bring the mower out for just that little bit of cleanup.

Oh, dear. We all know what place is paved with good intentions. I'd better justify myself. I was just sick for two days. I don't have the strength. It will just have to wait. No one is harmed by my leafy pool of dirty water.

Sick day

Today I am home sick (not homesick) again. My dog got a walk around the back yard this morning instead of a walk around the neighborhood, which bewildered him somewhat, but then he is no stranger to bewilderment.

Mid-morning, I did a little therapeutic sitting in the sun:



I wore a hat to shade my face, but I deliberately exposed my arms and shins to the sun. The deck is still quite messy, unswept, weedy, but fortunately sitting in the sun does not require tidiness.

Before I came back inside, I decided to take some pictures to show the difference between calibrachoa and double calibrachoa, which I mentioned the other day. Here is calibrachoa:



And very pretty it is. Here is double calibrachoa:



And here:



And since the double calibrachoa is in with the strawberries, I took some pictures of berries in progress.

Here are some blossoms:



And some very green and immature berries:



So there you go.

Mildly ill

I was just checking the weather. I would like to mow the lawn again in the next couple days, and, fortunately, I don't see rain in the forecast until possibly Friday. I have to wait until I feel up to it.

Yesterday I was having intestinal symptoms of an unspecified nature and also developed a mild headache. I made sure to go to bed on time so I could get a good night's sleep, and I felt okay this morning, except tired. But as the morning went on at work the mildly aching head, waves of nausea, and a sense of dizziness crept up on me and before lunch I came home. This afternoon I slept well over three hours straight. I feel better than this morning, but not tip-top. I hope to get another good night's sleep and I hope that will complete the cure.

Strawberries and things

Last night I planted the creeping jenny around the edge of these barrels, as is my tradition. Usually the interior is double impatiens, but I haven't seen many of those this year and didn't want the colors I did see. I was going to just buy regular impatiens and was opting for all white, but the store I was at didn't have enough white impatiens. Later I saw these white begonias so got them instead.



Now that I see them together, I'm not sure it's a great match, with the begonias' dark leaves and the bright green creeping jenny. We'll see how it looks as they mature.

For a couple years, I've had a hanging basket of strawberries. A couple made it through the winter, and I bought some more, and decided to mix flowers in, too. These purple double calibrachoa were so pretty, I couldn't resist. Ordinary calibrachoa is like a miniature petunia, a trumpet-shaped flower, but these have the extra petals. I do have some ordinary calibrachoa as well, for other pots, in other colors.



Obviously I have not yet hung this hanging pot.

Yard work and gardening

While the lawnmower was being serviced, the grass got very long. On Monday I mowed it, but in the back yard I left the grass catcher assembly off, so that I would not have to keep stopping to dump out the heavy, damp grass. That was something my dad used to do: mow one day without catching the grass, let it dry out on the yard a couple days, then drive the mower over the yard with the grass catcher on and the mower blades up high -- not to cut but to spin and pull the grass in -- and pick up the grass. That way you had less and lighter, dryer grass to deal with. Because the grass this time had gotten so long, I still had a lot to deal with, even though it was dry and light. On Wednesday, I think it was, I did the picking up. Now the law looks quite respectable -- for now.



In a few days it will need to be mowed again, but it will not be so meadow-like as before.

These are the red begonias I planted on Thursday:



And these are flowers still waiting to be planted:



In the black tray on the left in front are eleven French lavender (lavendula dentata). I didn't think I would find any this year, so when I found these in front of Rite-Aid, of all places, I was so excited I picked up the whole tray and put it in my cart.

Coffee, please, please, please

This morning I poured water into the coffee maker, and it immediately overflowed. Apparently at some previous time--I'm guessing yesterday morning--I put coffee in, filled it with water, but forgot to ever turn it on. So I turned it on now, and I cleaned up the water that was pooling in the counter and dripping down the fronts of the drawers to the floor.

Once again, proof that I am incapable of making coffee until I have had some coffee.

A few thoughts

My computer has been wonky. I think I have it resolved.

All my red begonias are planted.

Last night I was reminded of the fact that I am incapable of handling a garden hose without getting my own feet wet.

Cutting remark

Today after work, I mowed the lawn. Kind of a soothing task when you have a riding mower.

Woof

Busy day. My dogs are barking.

Morning and evening

Every workday morning I look at some piece of my home and yard and think, "When I get home this evening, I'll take care of that. I'll do this or that task." Almost every workday evening I think, "I'm too tired. The world won't end if that waits another day."

Pym pleasure

I didn't plant anything last night because I was exceptionally tired and went to bed early. Today and tomorrow, rain is forecast. Do you say "forecast" or "forecasted"? It is not raining yet.

I'm trying to thing what else to write about besides the weather and my own sleep patterns, which are frequently recurring, yet intrinsically uninteresting, topics in my blog.

Yesterday I found out a co-worker of mine is a fan of Barbara Pym. It is unusual to come across someone who even knows about her. My co-worker has not read all of Pym's novels, however, so I am bringing in Some Tame Gazelle for her to read.



I love Barbara Pym. There is a Barbara Pym Society.

First planting

Yesterday, after I got home from work, and after I walked the dog, and after I ate some dinner, and after I chatted with my folks on the phone, then I did some planting. I planted a calla lily, six red begonias, and six white bacopas in a barrel on the shady side of my deck.

Here is a blurry, through-the-screen picture. The other four begonias on the ground are destined for hanging pots.



After planting, I was a little worried that the bacopa will overwhelm the begonias. The red begonia blooms are so beautiful. In the past I've had just the begonias and lily in this pot. But I figured, oh, well. That's what you do in gardening. Try something and if you don't like it then next year do it differently.

More flowers, one less lilac

Well, by afternoon yesterday the sun was out and it was beautiful. I stopped at two places on the way home to get more flowers. Since double impatiens seem to be rare I thought I'd settle for ordinary impatiens, but I wanted it white. Garden Spot had pink impatiens but a lot of pretty white begonias, so I bought those. I also picked up sage and thyme for my herb barrel. Then I went to Haggen, where I had seen some healthy, big calla lilies last Friday, and I bought one.

When I got home, I walked my dog around the back yard and found that a white lilac tree had fallen down. It had been growing on a slope by the creek, and a few years back my dad had it staked to grow more upright. Now the plastic ties to the stake had broken and was lying on the ground with the top dangling in the creek. It fell at the roots, so my theory is that the ground is so saturated that it could not hold the tree firmly at that angle, and when the full weight of the tree pulled against the straps they broke.

I was kind of sad because I remember that my sister-in-law had given my dad the plant as a gift some years ago.

Steady

It is raining steadily. It makes me not want to walk the dog.

Even more

Yesterday I bought even a few more plants, but I didn't plant anything yesterday because I had places to go and it rained.

Plants to plant

I have a lot of plants to plant. There are the plants I bought last week, still waiting to be transplanted:



And in my car are many more that I bought yesterday at the Barkley Haggen. Red begonias, purple verbena, a couple of wall flowers, two red and one yellow nicotiana, a marigold, some parsley, a couple of pansies, and perhaps more that I can't remember right now. Those are in my car, in cardboard flats, waiting for me to carry them down to the deck.

Oh, yes, lemon balm.

Anyway, I hope to at least get started planting today. We'll see what the weather does. It's not raining right now, but it is overcast, and the paving stones in the deck are damp.

There's a big crow walking around the lawn. Crows are so big compared to some of the little twitterers we get around here that when I catch sight of their movement from the corner of my eye, I expect to see a squirrel or a cat when I look, but no, it's a crow.

Waiting for the walk

I woke up extra early this morning, so my dog thinks it's time for his walk, but it's not. He hangs around me, puts his chin on my lap, wanders over to the couch and jumps on it but stares at me and, when I make some move that could be misinterpreted as being about to get up, comes running over and puts his paws on my lap, gets pushed away, lies down, sighs audibly, etc. Lots of noise of nails going clickety click on the floor.

It's a bit overcast outside. It looks like it may have rained a little bit overnight, but it's not raining now.

I have had a cup of coffee. That is important.

It's Friday. One more day of the work week, then the weekend. That will be a pleasant change. It's good when both your workplace and your home are places you like to be. I'm blessed.

Well, now it's getting closer to the actual time for my dog's walk. He'll be beside himself with joy. He is every morning. He's pretty cute.

Soft in the evening

Today was our Very Warm Day. In the morning, the temperature was so lovely that I wished I could stay home and putter* around the yard and my deck. The late afternoon was almost too warm for me. The low 70s are perfect for me; the high 70s begin to become oppressive. Right now, though, it's lovely again. It's about 8:00 p.m. and the temperature is just cool. I have windows open and the air is fresh but not cold.



*I think someone at the Festival of Faith & Writing talked about "the sacrament of puttering." And I've quoted this before, from Elizabeth von Arnim's The Solitary Summer: "Every now and then I leave the book on the seat and go and have a refreshing potter among my flower beds, from which I return greatly benefited, and with a more just conception of what, in this world, is worth bothering about, and what is not."