Jaci Dawn

I think a proper garden should have treasures hidden in it. Unexpected art, winding pathways, a nice garden bench. I was thinking about that this morning when I had my camera in hand and later this afternoon when I was viewing the world through someone else’s camera.

Through my camera:

There are salmon swimming upstream on the fence and on the wire support for my gladiolas…

So one is going east and the other one is headed west…

A frog in a planter…

A bunny by the bench…

A snake slithering through…

A hovering dragonfly…

A magazine rack with a glass top that needs to be repainted…

I kid you not. But then I just showed you the photo of it. I should be ashamed. That glass top has needed repainting for two summers and I have neglected to do it. I promise: this year I will repaint that glass top. Any ideas for what I can put in the magazine rack? I disdain plastic flowers so don’t even go there.

Through someone else’s camera:

After I took these photos, I went to see the Willy Wonka 40th Anniversary Sing Along at McMennamin’s Crystal Ballroom with my friend, Mary (and her adorable granddaughter, Joy). And I spied two more things I just need for my garden!

I need some of those giant amanita muscaria mushrooms.

And I need some of those narcissus tea cup flowers Willy Wonka drank out of (and then ate).

Now I just have to wrap my brain around how to make the giant mushrooms (without using styrofoam!). I think I can manage the tea cups – those are a matter of the right glue, the right cups and saucers and a stand to put them on.

Boy, am I glad I decided to think about hidden garden treasures today. It set me up for the afternoon’s delight and another craft project for the summer months.

And, yes, I think I will pass on the giant lollipops.

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I’m tired.

I probably over-did.

I had that surgery on Thursday. The one where the doctor goes in and uses ultrasound technology to blow up a kidney stone into pieces the size of sand. That surgery.

It wasn’t as easy as it sounds. There was a stent the doctor put in between the kidney and the bladder that caused spasms. I had two pain killers on hand. I slept a lot.

Got the stent pulled out on Friday and felt immediate relief. But my kidney still felt a bit like I had been sucker-punched. I slept more.

Today I felt great. No pain. Ahhhhhh.

So I went out shopping: Home Depot for the fence project mentioned before, BiMart (locally owned) to purchase items used to spoil dogs, the Farmer’s Market for local strawberries and hazelnut mulch, and the grocery store.

And then, because it was uncommonly nice out, I weeded and edged the front yard flower beds. That really is not as big of a project as I make it sound: not many weeds grow under the rhododendrons and the earth stays soft and loamy. Trimming up the rhododendrons was probably not the greatest idea, but I trimmed one up anyway. I like to be able to see under them and behind them.

Then I planted sunflowers.

I hate to even confess I did that but I wasn’t home during the month of May and I didn’t get any sunflower seeds into the ground. There was a pot of 3 sunflowers for $13 at the grocery store and I figured I’d bite the bullet. It’s for the finches, you know.

The weather has been so crappy that our Dragon Flower hasn’t even bloomed yet. It blooms on the 7th of June. Rather, it has always bloomed on the 7th of June every year since we inherited the original plant. This year it is going to bloom on the 4th of July.

The dogs eat it. So this year – since it is late – I’ve actually had time to think about how to keep the dogs out of it. I put up the unused tomato cages around it.

It’ll keep Harvey out, anyway. I don’t have much hope for keeping Murphy out of anything. He’s a motivated pest.

I spread that hazelnut mulch out around the plants in the island flower bed. Pretty, isn’t it? Not harmful to dogs. Slugs hate it. Eventually I want to do all my flower beds in hazelnut mulch.

What else did I do…?

I did the laundry and hung it outside to dry. I love love love my clothesline! I hate hate hate it when I have to use the dryer.

Oh – and I bought myself a garden helper!

No more lugging that 75′ of hose out and wondering where it’s going to kink! Better yet – I can reel it all back in. AHHHHHH.

I worked on my little fence project, too, but I have decided to do a Squidoo “lens” about that. I’ll publish a link when I’m done with it.

For now: I’m done in. My back doesn’t hurt but my get-up-and-go is all gone. I’m happy it was a productive day.

Just don’t ask if I cleaned house… because I didn’t. ;-P

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I have this idea on how to recycle the wood from one of those (actually three of those) little picket fences you buy in a roll.

See, I have the fence but the plastic that holds it together is brittle and the stakes that hold it into the ground are non-existent. But the wooden pickets just need paint: they’re fine. I hate to just throw them away because the fence is broken (or because it is such a pain to try to set up in the first place).

I figured I could use a length of lath across the back (two lengths, actually, to stabilize) and buy long wooden stakes which I would nail onto it every 6 pickets (or thereabouts).

So I went down to Home Depot to price the materials and to get an idea of how to fasten the lath and stakes to the pickets. Of course, they sell what I want to make: little 3′ long picket fences to put around flower beds. I even put two in my basket because I needed them right now and I knew I wouldn’t actually get to my project for a week or do. And they make great proto-types. $5 a piece, pre-made.

Lath is cheap: a bundle of 12 for $4.99. Stakes are right next to the lath: $0.29 each. That would make six of those little fences for under $20 (including cost of fasteners and spray paint). I figured either a long staple from a staple gun or maybe even a fence staple for chicken wire (the smallest ones). But I couldn’t find them by myself and had to ask for help.

MISTAKE.

What is it about some men that when they find out a woman has a project on her mind, they have to explain to her why it can’t work the way she’s pictured it? And why do they have to talk to her like she’s a child?

“You can’t replicate the fastenings on that fence. They used a pneumatic staple gun.”

“I know that: it was put together in a factory. Got it. Where are the fence staples?”

(Shows me a package of HUGE fence staples) “These will just break the wood. You can’t staple that like they did, they used a pneumatic staple gun. That’s a heavy-duty commercial staple gun run off of…”

“I know that. I got that. Those staples are too big. I wanted to look at the littlest ones, please.”

“Those are for fastening chicken wire. That’s a small wire fence you staple to posts.”

“Then I’ll look at 5/16″ staples for a staple gun.”

“Those were inserted with a pneumatic staple gun. There’s glue on each staple and they come in a long roll that runs through the staple gun…”

He continues in his vein of why I can’t do what I want. I just said, “I’m only pricing things. I’m going to leave now.”

I wanted to say, “You jerk. Did I ask you for advice? Did I ask you if I had permission to do this?? Can I hit you on the head with my picket fence that was stapled with a pneumatic staple gun? Oh, heck: sell me the staple gun and I’ll use it on you: bratatatatatatatat!”

I came home with my price list and confronted my husband: how would he go about putting it together?

Wanna know what he said?

Sure you do.

You’re just itching.

He’d purchase lath, stakes, and either 5/16″ staples for the staple gun or some of those small fence staples. Maybe he’d use a little heavy-duty Gorilla glue between the pieces of wood when he ran the staple through them.

Made me want to bop the Home Depot guy even more.

I didn’t complete my project: I have yet to buy the materials. What I did do was recycle the white wire fence I had around the island flower bed. Don keeps hitting it with the lawn mower and it served no purpose. Originally, I put it there to keep Murphy out of my flower bed. It never worked.

It just gets in the way of mowing and edging.

I rearranged my north flower bed by putting the park bench  between some peonies where my aster used to be (I dug the aster out). I have some wire features along the fence (invisible to the camera) to keep the gladiolas from falling over when they get taller, but both dogs walk all over the flowers in the front of the bed.

The horse is temporary: I need to fix his legs. But right now he serves as a further deterrent to dogs that might think of jumping over that little fence to walk on tender flowers. There’s just not enough room for a dog between the white fence, the plants, the gladiola barrier, the horse and my bench.

Just enough fence to leave open the space in front of the bench so it remains utilitarian. It’s a great view.

Wait! I still had more fence left! I took one section back to my prayer garden and halved it:

One slightly used wire fence forms a plant barrier to my garden path. Cool. Doubles as something to hold up the Shasta daisies when they are heavy with bloom.

I left the fence on the south end of the island above. I have an evening primrose that grew through it and is using it for support. And (this is important) I have a peony that the dogs like to pee on. Just one peony: they don’t bother any of the other ones. I left the fence around that one peony to keep the dogs at bay. So far it works.

I’ll post photos of the picket fence when I attempt to make it. I’m sure it will turn out just fine despite the nay-sayer at Home Depot.

He should see some of the other things I’ve jury-rigged in my life time. He needs to think outside of the box.

ttfn

P.S. Today was the first day of summer and the sun came out. I think we even reached 83 degrees Farenheit. It was almost heavenly.

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Recently I had the pleasure of hearing a first-hand account of a Bigfoot encounter. If you know me, you know I am a believer in the elusive Sasquatch. I make jokes and follow the news, but the truth is: I think there *is* something out there. It doesn’t really worry me when I am out in the woods (I worry more about Here Kitty Kitty Kitty as in COUGAR and bears than I do Harry of Harry & the Hendersons) but it is something I think about. A lot, actually.

I went out to dinner with a group of old friends and new friends recently. Two of my old friends told a story from their youthful days that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. They did it tag-team style as they recounted an event that took place over 35 years ago, an event that is burned into their memories.

They worked together and after work they sometimes managed to get a six pack of beer which they took out into the mountains to drink. On this particular night, there was just a little snow left in the passes and the side roads were accessible. They were in an old Karmann Ghia and couldn’t go too far off-roads, but they went south out of town and onto some old Jeep trail until they came to the snow. It was dark out and they parked so they could easily get back out in the little car. Juniper and Pinion Pine surrounded them, sagebrush and old snow drifts, and the deep black night.

The first thing they noticed when they stopped was the set of eyeballs glowing in the woods, just visible in the passenger side-view mirror. “Mule deer,” they said and agreed.

But the eyes moved closer and the figure loomed larger. The two teenagers fell silent as they watched something in the side view mirrors. The brake lights no longer reflected in the eyes and darkness enveloped the car. Suddenly, the back of the car dipped down like someone was pushing down on the bumper. Really went down. Then it squeaked back to level.

The two young men sat silent a moment.

“What the …?”

“Want to see?”

Now, at this point I would have been turning the key in the ignition and getting the hell out of there, but this story is about young men. Young men who obviously never watched Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” and who obviously never screamed at Tippi Hedren: “Don’t open the door! Don’t open the door! Don’t CLOSE THE DOOR BEHIND YOU!!!” (Tippi Hedren ignores all the warnings, too, and nearly gets pecked to death by the birds in the attic.)

The once-young men who told me this story both got OUT OF THE CAR. Yes, they actually got out. Testosterone – this is why men do stupid things. Anyway, they got out and shined their flashlights around. Nothing. Except the SMELL!!!

They tried to put it into words.

“The smell is hard to describe..not overpowering, but strong….dirty, sweaty, burning hair, rotten flesh. Kinda akin to that when an abscess bursts…”

There was also a set of very large human-like tracks in the snow bank where whatever-it-was retreated. They ran their flashlights out along the tracks.

And then it screamed.

Suddenly, good sense took over: they jumped into the Karmann Ghia and got the heck out of Dodge. Somewhere down the road, they stopped and popped open their first beer of the evening.

The wife of one of the men confided to me that, “I used to think he was making this up but the story never changes. It’s always the same details. I believe him now.”

They claim the encounter happened somewhere near Connors Summit in Nevada. (???) Circa 1970-1973.

Do you believe? I am convinced.

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Javan turned two last week. He is my second-oldest grandchild and the middle sibling of his family. Javan (or “Javes”) is an old-soul sort of child, rather solemn with smiles reserved for the most special moments and people in his short life. He is placed between a very bossy and meticulous older brother and a jovial little brother. Javan, like his grandmother, is not only a middle child but is an HSP.

My daughter planned a birthday party around Javan’s particular needs : something low-key, a few very close friends and family. Then it rained and the friends had other things to do, so it ended up being just family. Perfect for Javan.

He was so funny. It hasn’t been so many months since we attended his older brother’s birthday party with all the  surprises and gifts. Javes’ party was even more low-key with fewer presents, but when you are two years old, you aren’t competing with the previous birthdays and everything is wonderful. It’s all about the gifts, paper and bows.

So Grandma thought. It was really about the Matchbox™ cars. Someone gave Sam & Arwen about 20 cars in boxes and they wrapped them up for Javan.

You really can’t tell from the photo, but he’s sitting atop all of those cars. He tucked them between his legs and under himself before proudly declaring in his plaintive little-boy voice, “All mine.” It’s a sentiment only a second child could feel. The sudden understanding that these were his and not shared toys.

He didn’t much care about the blanket in the bag. The cars were his and his alone. All mine.

The party carried over into today. Father’s Day, 2011. I was pointedly ignoring the date. Sam & Arwen had a wedding to attend. What better way to ignore the date than to babysit the two oldest grandsons?

At Grandma’s House, Javan got a plastic shovel-hoe-rake set that was nearly identical to Zephan’s 2nd birthday present from Grandma & Poppa. No need to worry about labeling: Zephan memorized the color coding immediately. Z’s shovel is green, the rake red and the hoe blue. Javan’s are red, blue and red.

There comes a time in every grandmother’s life when you have to see if the dogs are really, truly *safe* with your grandbabies. I still wouldn’t leave the boys out side alone with the dogs, but the dogs were exceptionally well-behaved today. The dogs are keepers.

I’m torn between whether this is teamwork or supervisor work on the part of Zephan. Probably the latter.

To the amusement of everyone, Murphy took exception to the “popcorn” popper.

In all, it was a good day.

We walked to the park, even. I didn’t take my camera. Zephan talked the entire way. He walked on the curb like Poppa. The pair of them were so funny!

It was a good day from my perspective. I don’t know how Don felt about it: he’s the Dad.

That wraps up my sappy posts for this past week. Upcoming: a Bigfoot Encounter.

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I had this plan: get all the unpleasant stuff done before July 1, 2011. Then I could just start 2011 all over at the half-way mark. It was a beautiful plan (and I still may do it).

Today I contacted the urologist and scheduled surgery to remove that 5mm kidney stone out of my body. It’s a day surgery (out-patient). June 23, High Noon.

(I love that song: Tex Ritter. Love that movie, too. Yay Gary Cooper! And Grace Kelly!)

Seriously: surgery is at noon.

That will be the last item on my hit list for the first six months of 2011.

The last item, so I thought.

There was this tick, you see. And a conversation. And a struggle with a tick remover tool, said tick, and a jar of rubbing alcohol. The tick remover and the rubbing alcohol won (although my husband said the amount I used was over-kill. I wanted the sucker VERY dead).

And life resumed as normal: Don was banned to the shower and his clothes went straight into the washing machine. After identifying the tick as a deer tick and making certain its head was intact on it’s pickled little body, I foolishly flushed it.

Foolishly because when I came home tonight, Don asked me to look at his elbow again. And this is what it looks like:

Damn.

He has opted to wait until tomorrow morning to go see a doctor. He won’t go to the ER for the tick bite. Right now, it is just swollen and stiff, no other symptoms. Everything I’ve read gives me the impression he can afford to wait but a number of my friends are urging me to over-rule him. Right. Like I have much chance of doing that.

If he gets flu-like symptoms between now and tomorrow morning, I’ll haul his behind to the ER. I’m really not trying to ignore the seriousness of the situation, but you can’t haul a full-grown adult male off to see a doctor without his express permission (or if he is too disabled to fight you).

Now, about that 2011 Do Over… Maybe I should start by bonking Don on the head and dragging him off to the ER? ;P

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It is late evening on a Friday night and I am feeling like I need some public accountability. I have projects I need to complete and if I don’t list them somewhere, they will fall into oblivion and never ever get finished.

If I list them here, they will be public. They will still never, ever get finished but they will be on public record that I intended to do them.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

OUCH.

#1. I have a book I need to return to my friend, Marci. It has been in the envelope to mail since February. It is in a drawer at work. All I have to do it take it to the front desk and order a UPS pick-up. I pay later. How hard is that? It is June 10 and the package is still in the drawer at work, addresses and sealed. I think I even put a note in it to Marci dated sometime last February.

#2. I have a postcard to mail to my friend, Mary in the UK. I’ve only had it ready to mail for three weeks. It just needs postage. I never go to the Post Office since they closed the little one inside our independent grocer. They closed the grocery store, too: they are building a Safeway. But I digress. i need to put extra postage on the postcard and mail it to my dear friend, Mary. She’s been to Istanbul and back and I haven’t mailed the postcard.

#3. I need to have a yard sale. WE need to have a yard sale but I can’t just go and sell Don’s stuff without his permission. I need him on board with a yard sale, especially when I start hauling his junk down the stairs to sell. I am arbitrarily setting a date for this yard sale: either the third or fourth weekend in July. No Later. I work well with deadlines.

#4. I need to write several letters and thank-yous. I need my cousin Steve’s mailing address. Steve gave me an incredibly special gift that I want to acknowledge. I’ve only met Steve a couple times in my life but he made the drive up to Ely for my dad’s service and he brought me a painting that I have drooled over (but couldn’t afford) for years just because I told him how much I liked it. You can’t get much sweeter than my cousin. I wish I had known him better as we grew up, but that didn’t happen. I want to make sure we do get to know each other as senior citizens. I don’t have a photo of the painting and it is in storage in Reno, but if you go to Steve’s website you can see it. It reminds me of Levi when he was 12 (not the scenery, which is Tucson, but the bike & the tricks & the hairdo of the boy on the bike). It’s a beautiful painting.

#5. I need to write a will. My dad had a will. He made a trust and we circumvented probate because of it. Don and I need to make a will and set up a trust account for our children with specific instructions. As hard as the past few weeks have been (and harder on my brother, who is chief executor), it would have been horrid if we had to deal with probate. As much junk as Don and  I have, it seems fair that we should set up a trust and let our kids know our wishes ahead of time.

If you don’t have a trust or a will, get it done. Precious things will go to the wrong heir. Probate will freeze the accounts. What is already a miserable time for your children will become a nightmare.

Even with a will and a trust, we’re dealing with a nightmare. Or Terry is.

#6. I promised to send something handmade to several people earlier this year. I have two items done and I need to figure out a way to ship the items. I also need to finish the other three items and ship them. One is just a loaf of home-made bread that I need to bake for a kid, but I need to do it.

#7. I need to have that darn kidney stone blasted out of my kidney. I am actually working on this one! I had an x-ray done on Wednesday. the doctor’s office was supposed to call me but I think I will have to call them on Monday. I know the doctor wants to get this done, too: he called me. But his office staff sometimes drags their feet. I’m learning how this works. It’s day surgery & I’m not too worried about it. I just want this to be a part of my past as soon as possible.

I want to start July 1, 2011 with a clean slate: NEW half-way through the year. The first half has been way too much and I want to bury it.

#7. I am giving away or selling part of our vast library. Yes, I am parting with BOOKS. In order to do that I am making an inventory list of the books we currently own so we can sit and read the list while debating the merits of keeping it in our library. What Oregon City Public Library’s book store will not accept will go to Goodwill. I hate to part with books but it MUST BE DONE. I have a huge library of children’s books that needs to be divided between grands. I have books coming from my dad’s estate to replace all the ones I am purging.

I need to read a lot more books.

And that is just the beginning.

So what am I doing tomorrow? Weeding out three more flower beds. I need to get ahead of the weeds, too. And trim up the rhodies. And build the dog run.

We also have to have the roof de-mossed. Fortunately, someone else gets to do that and after a week of taking bids on the job, I scheduled a company to come in and do it for $300. The other bids were around $800. Huge disparity in price: two companies took into consideration the Cape Cod style roof and height of the house (1 story with a loft=2 stories in their minds) and the first company said simply, “small house” – which it is). While I did my homework, I am still amazed at the price disparity and crossing my fingers that I will be pleased with the results.

That’s it. That is enough. I’m tired thinking about it.

ttfn

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June 7, 1980 to June 7, 2011.

I had a rough day yesterday. I understand it is simply a process of grieving and I will have more days like yesterday than I care to contemplate.

It was our 31st Wedding Anniversary and I should have had a wonderful day. But I kept remembering the man who walked me down the “aisle” (figuratively speaking as it was an outdoor wedding with no aisle or formal seating). I can still remember the papery touch of the skin on his hands and the frail feel of his stooped shoulders as age wore him down.

It bothered me a lot that I cannot remember the feel of my mother’s skin, but I do remember the feel of my little sister’s as I braided her hair one day after Mom died.

I remember my mom’s eyes under the influence of morphine as she tried to tell us all good-bye and that she loved us (she could no longer speak or hold a pen to write).

Those kinds of thoughts haunted me all day yesterday.

But evening finally came. Don took me out to our favorite little pub, The Highland Stillhouse. Of course, I then sat and thought about how often I dreamed of taking my dad down to the Stillhouse when he next came to visit: he would have loved the pub! And they played a string of Celtic bands: Dad’s favorite music was Celtic (although he leaned more to The Clancy Brothers, Tommy Makkem, and Noel McLoughlin).

I had the Prawns with gruyere cheese and mushrooms. Don had steak (medium rare), glazed carrots and French Fries. Rather, he was supposed to have the fries: the cook made an error and gave him mashed potatoes.

He pointed out the error nicely and within minutes we had a side of fries presented to us by the cook, personally.

We ordered ale but the ale we wanted ran out: they gave us half a pint for free because that was all there was of that ale.

We had a delicious dinner, quiet conversation and superb service (as always). The service is one of the reasons we like the Stillhouse so much: but they also offer live music on Sundays and Thursdays.

After dinner, we settled down for a short “Jesse Stone” movie (Tom Selleck) together.

Sometime during the evening, I quit thinking about the people I’ve lost and moved back into the present with the people I still have and love. That’s the way of grief.

Here’s to many more years of marriage: sláinte!

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The first thing I was struck with when I went home was the sense that Dad was not there. It wasn’t the empty feeling of losing him that I experienced, but the goose-bumpy-ghost-haunting lack of feeling: he was not there. He wasn’t haunting the house. Little shreds of his being were not hiding in the atmosphere. A palpable sense of someone who used to live there did not hang in the air. Dad was gone. Long gone.

We leave behind the memories but even those have no lasting effect on the atmosphere when the living soul is removed. Memories are held in the heart and in the dreams, a long and faulty video tape that runs in our heads when we close our eyes.

I felt only a vague sense of trespassing as we sorted through the contents of dressers, the basement, the two sheds, the garage and more. Sometimes a treasure presented itself (when I get everything home from Reno there will be more to share). Mostly, however, the dry sense that no one was watching, no one could protest and no one lived in those halls settled on us. In short, there was no sense at all except that of our memories.

I feel like I should write something profound. But like the ghost that did not haunt the house, the words that need to form are not there.

I am home. Life goes on. Dad’s birthday is on Saturday and that will be the first hurdle of grief beyond the tangible stuff of things left behind. I need to write my own will, have a yard sale to get rid of my own clutter (and make room for the new clutter coming in), work on genealogy and write thank-you notes, and I really really need to weed out my prayer garden this weekend. I need to have that stupid kidney stone removed.

Harvey and I need to go for a long walk here at home.

What did we leave behind? The memories? Terry and I grew up in a different house: the folks bought the house Dad died in after we left home. The memories were in the little memorabilia, not in the house or the yard.

We left behind walls stained with nicotine and tar. We left ugly wall paper and strange marbled linoleum on the floor in the kitchen. Dust in the crevices of the carpet and black widow spiders hunkered down in dark corners of the basement. We left mud dauber nests in the sheds. Old rocks embedded in the dirt. A set of Time-Life self help books. An old Winchester on the wall over the unused fireplace. Cordwood in the hearth and in the box outside under the picnic table. A moldy coffee pot. Mom’s treasured pyrex cooking set.

We left furniture, drawings, knick-knacks, dishes, tools, trunks. We left behind our nephew’s dead cars and broken bicycles, bags of trash and unrecycled recycles. We left behind a thirty-something nephew and a 13 year old niece. We left all of Chrystal’s inheritance because she thinks she will pack it all up here and move back to Nevada by September. We left behind the old green cinder-block house and the ugly indoor-outdoor carpet in the sun room.

We left behind so very much and yet we took our memories.

(OK, the last photo is real. It’s my dad’s political soap box. My favorite side of the soap box. He ran for Nevada State Senate – and lost. My mom drew her feet on the top of the box. What can I say??)

Until later…

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