Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Native Plants in the Garden (Part 3)

Posted in gardening, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 17, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Oregon checkermallow
Oregon checkermallow – sidalcea oregana

Tiny pinks on long stems. This mallow started life in out garden as a tiny free specimen. I put it in a planter and it thrived. Moved it into the ground and it nearly died. It is in a large planter, soil mixed with sand, and it is happy once again. It is a bee favorite & common on the Coast.

stinging nettle – urtica dioica

I hope you know what plant that is without the ID below it: run into this without enough clothes on and you’ll wish you had never met it. I crawled into it once when I was a child. Nettle stings all over my face! Fortunately, the damage is never serious and the sting can be dealt with (in my case, I probably smeared mud all over my face. I was a clever child – HA!). I started growing it for the medicinal benefits of nettle tea. It is in a pot so it doesn’t escape into the yard and I deadhead the flowers before they produce seeds: this is all the nettle I need in my yard. Harvest with care: garden gloves, long sleeves. I dry the leaves in the dehydrator instead of hanging them to dry. I’ve read you can cook the leaves as a spinach substitute (I’m not fond of cooked spinach except on pizza). The leaves lose their sting when dry. I mix the leaves with feverfew and yarrow for a green tea that I can drink without sweetener.

Nettle may lower your blood pressure, help with blood sugar, hay fever, reduce inflammation, and help with enlarged prostate, and contains antioxidants and many vitamins. (I may write more on nettle in another post on herbs in the future.)

Oregon blue-eyed grass – stsyrinchium bellum
Oregon flag iris – iris tenax
Douglas iris – iris douglasiana

Wild irises.

I love irises! These are my wild native irises (I have “domestic” irises as well). The first two iridacea shown love moist soil and are planted in a little shady swale next to the south fence of our yard along with the camassia. I need to divide the flag iris this fall. The Douglas iris is more like its commercial counterparts: dry soil is fine. They love sunshine. The blooms are larger than the flag iris but still delicate.

wild camas – camassia quamish

Wild camas (which is related to asparagus) is a beloved forage plant for the Indigenous peoples of the PNW. I loves marshy areas. I have not tried eating it: I have too few of the plants to forage just yet.

false Solom0n’s Seal (m. stellatum) & bear grass (xerophyllum tenax)
bear grass – xeropyllum tenax
false Solomon’s seal – m. stellatum

My husband brought me a gift of bear grass one year along with the deer ferns. Falso Solomon’s seal hitched a ride. My bear grass has never failed to bloom: the spikes tower above the heavy leaves. I think one of my plants is showing its age and beginning to die out, but it produced three beautiful spikes of flowers this year. And the false Solomon’s seal never disappoints, but it is gone by summer and the ground bare where it flourished in the wet of spring.

“poached egg” flower/Douglas’ meadowfoam – limnanthes douglasii
“poached egg” flower/Douglas’ meadowfoam – limnanthes douglasii

This beautiful ground cover was also a hitch hiker. I think it came with the yew and maple (long gone now). It spreads quickly, covers the ground beautifully, and attracts every bee, bee fly, and wasp. It greens up in the Autumn, overwinters green, and blooms in the spring – and then it is gone. The ground bare.

I have not tried too many other plants mixed in with the false Solomon’s seal to cover the bare spot in summer, but I have tried where the meadowfoam is. And meadowfoam does not like to be shaded out during the dormant stage! The bare spots in the photo are where i removed plants that shaded out the meadowfoam and it died back. However… it seems to love peonies and grows profusely around them despite the shade of summer, so I may try putting a couple peonies in there.

vine maple – acer circinatum

Don dug this out of a bar pit one year. he intended to make it into a Bonsai tree, but vane maple grows too quickly and he had to put it into the ground. It is as large as it is ever going to get. The leaves turn brilliant red in the autumn. The squirrels love the helicopter seeds. Very little grows under it but I am hoping some huechera (coral bells) will take off.

narrowleaf milkweed – asclepias fascicularis

Milkweed. I could write a blog post on this, the last of my Natives to show off. I planted it by seed: two kinds of native milkweeds, the showy (pink flowers) and a few of the narrowleaf. They didn’t grow. Well, to heck with that idea, right? I could purchase some starts but it just never seemed to happen. And four years after I tossed those seeds in the garden, I had a thick stem poking out of the ground. Suspicious, I broke a leaf off and watched as it oozed thick milky sap. Eureka! It only took four years for those seeds to grow! And grow they did: I now have to fight the plants to keep them contained in the corner of garden where I planted them: milkweed spreads by runners underground.

Bees, flies, butterflies (but never Monarchs – so far), and milkweed beetles love the plants. Invasive as the plant is, it grows well in the little corner of yard where it is, sharing space with peonies, asters, Voodoo lilies, and grape hyacinth. The hyacinth blooms first, then the peonies, followed by the voodoo lily. The milkweed rises up and blooms, fades and dies, and the asters bloom. A perfect full summer garden of bloom.

That is it for my native plants! My next posts will be about herbs in the garden, uses, recipes, and cautions. I’m excited for those posts!

Read Full Post »

Native Plants in the Garden Part 2

Posted in gardening, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 14, 2025| 2 Comments »

wild ginger – asarum canadense

One small plant Don dug up in the forest has turned into a spreading clump of wild ginger ground cover. It is nestled beneath the forsythia, one of the rhododendrons, and a sword fern. I don’t think there is any use for it (I could be wrong, but it is not the same thing as the ginger root used in cooking – that’s from Asia). It does smell the same!

bunchberry – cornus canadensis

We just purchased this. I’ve tried to grow bunchberry several times and failed miserably, but this time I hope to succeed! Planted in a shady place with lots of rotten wood to latch onto. It has pretty white flowers like a Dogwood tree, but is a wild ground cover.

California poppy – escholzia californica

It is not blooming yet. But I have quite a little collection of this – one of my favorite roadside wildflowers. My husband is not a fan, but what does he know?

?big leaf lupine – lupinus polyphyllus lindl (?)
?big leaf lupine – lupinus polyphyllus lindl (?)

I can’t swear to the identification. It came in the same wildflower seed packet as the California poppy, and was just labeled “lupine”. Lupines are among my favorite wildflowers, and there are so many varieties! Unfortunately, it was infested with white aphids earlier and I sprayed it with an herbal concoction that burned the leaves (dang!). A better solution was to spray the nasty things off with a small stream of water. I keep checking and they have not re-infested, so… Here’s hoping. I have several of these throughout the yard as well.

woodland strawberry (Fragaria vesca)

Another little ground cover that has exceeded! Don brought this home and I was dubious because of how quickly it spreads, but it hasn’t crowded out anything and sometimes there are actual tiny berries on it.

pearly everlasting – anaphalis margaritacea

I wish I had a photo of this in bloom! This makes a great dried flower in the fall with its tiny white flowers with yellow centers. It spreads through rhizomes and I have to be careful weeding out the insidious grass that entangles it in the winter and spring. But when it blooms, the flowers are well worth it.

Columbia Plateau Pricklypear – Opunta columbiana

This one is a bit of a stray. I have moved it several times, trying to find the right spot for it to thrive – and maybe bloom! Those long thorns are nasty little suckers! We dug this baby out of the roadside between Arlington and Hermiston, Oregon, on the Columbia Plateau. It is planted in sand, in a well-draining planter. I moved it to its present location (very carefully!) a year ago, and it seems very happy here. Whether or not it will ever bloom is a question: we might get too much rain for it to be that happy,

Western larch ( larix occidentalis) & Western sword fern (polystich munitum)
Lady fern – athryzim fillx-femina
deer fern – blechnum spicant
hazelnut (corlyus cornuta) & Western sword fern (polystichum munitum)

I don’t think you can have a yard or garden in Western Oregon without having to fend off the Western Sword fern! It can grow quite large. I have several that came with the house and I am slowly moving some of the off-spring to the north side of the garage where we have a rather inaccesible 3′ set back. It was lawn, but who wants to mow a lawn you can’t get to easily? Ferns are an easy answer: they grow naturally in this part of the world, they fill in the space, and don’t need extra watering! They can be ignored.

The Lady fern came from a single plant my husband brought home. It dies back completely every fall and comes back even bigger every spring. The deer fern is just an interesting border plant, also something my husband dragged home for me to adopt. I think I helped him with that one. ;P

And the western larch (known colloquially as a Tamarack) is just one of those Bonsai trees Don dug up in the middle of a USFS road and made into a Bonsai. I added it to this gallery because of the fern in the pot: how easily the Western sword fern attaches itself!

Pacific bleeding hearts – dicenta formosa

Where ferns grow, Pacific bleeding hearts grow. They spread via rhizomes and they spread profusely. Some may even refer to them as weeds. I rip them out enthusiastically when they grow into areas where I don’t want them. They look best in late winter and early summer, then the heat comes and they fade quickly: wild bleeding hearts like the moist, cool, shade of the Western half of Oregon. And I happen to like them better than their commercial cousins with the larger and more colorful blooms.

Blue elderberry – sambuca nigra subsp. cerulea

It is easy to get a red elderberry around here, but I grew up with blue ones. I don’t know if there is any use for red elderberry outside of herbal ones (I could be so very wrong on this, just speaking from my experience, not knowledge). Blue elderberries: syrup, wine, jelly… My husband swears they make the best syrup, I swear by chokecherry syrup (but we don’t have chokecherries in this climate). I’m not going to go into the benefits, but a great place to start looking is on WebMD. I do think I will try dyeing with my elderberry this year (hoping I get flowers and berries! It looks very healthy).

oregon hazelnut – corylus cornuta

I am going to stop this post with this plant: Oregon hazelnut. A filbert tree. Oregon and Turkey are the leading producers of hazelnuts. Roast them, dip them in chocolate, use them in your beer brewing. This bush planted by birds. It is around 20′ in height, has been pruned back by neighbors and us, and all the shells are empty of meat. You need two trees to have nuts form inside the shells, something we learned after watching this on take over our corner for nearly 20 years. A year ago, my husband brought home two small hazelnut starts from the woods, and (hopefully) (the squirrels and jays are praying) we will eventually get nuts.

I have more Natives in the yard. I just planted several. And I haven’t started on the herbs. 🙂

Read Full Post »

Native Plants in the Garden (Part 1)

Posted in gardening, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on May 12, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Lewis’ or Oregon mock orange – philadelphus lewisii

It has not bloomed yet, but I’ve only had it since 2023. It grows rather spindly – perhaps too much good soil and water and growing too quickly? But I found if i staked those spindly branches, they were much stronger the next year. One of my favorite wild bushes, blooms in June – July, smells amazing, and reminds me of rattlesnake draws in Eastern Oregon or Nevada where it commonly grows along a spring in the basalt.

Large flowered colloma – collomia grandiflora
large flowered collomia – colomia grandiflora

We discovered this growing along the roadside after a fire. It grows about 3-4′ tall. It is a native annual and we could purchase seeds (we tried seed collecting last fall, but beetles had devoured most of them!). This year, we dug one up (you can get a permit at the USFS). Hopefully, it makes it. Pic on the left is the one we dug up, pic on the right is a photo from last summer.

penstemmon – what variety??
?Little flower penstemmon – penstemon procerus (?)

Penstemmons are hard to identify without a field guide and a key, but we love them. The one on the left is one we dug up on Saturday (we dug up two, we won’t know if they are the same species or not until they bloom. There’s a fourth one in the front garden, but it is still very tiny and hasn’t bloomed. The one on the right – I am fairly certain it is the Little Flower penstemmon: the flowers are tiny. It came with a yew and Rocky Mountain maple (both dead and gone now). Penstemmons make great ground covers, especially in those dry, rocky spots.

Note: we don’t know what killed the trees, but all the plants that came with survived. The trees thrived for about five years, the maple died off first. The yew lived a couple more years before suddenly dying on us.

Indian paintbrush – castelleja affinis
crimson paintbrush – castilleja

Who doesn’t love paintbrush? It is parasitic which I didn’t know (and which explains why I’ve never succeeded in growing it in the past). The plant on the right is one I just purchased from a native plant nursery, complete with instructions on how/where to plant it and what plants it might want to attach to. The second one is one we just dug up. Unfortunately, it is attached to an oxeye daisy – a native daisy, but one that is a bit of a weed. I prefer my Shasta daisies which stay in their place, but they aren’t natives, so…

I planted the purchased paintbrush near a large leaf arnica (also a native, no photo). I will plant the new one nearby as well.

?dense sedge – corex densa (?)
? dense sedge – corex densa (?)

I’ll be honest: this could be an ornamental sedge. I don’t know. Birds planted it in our yard. I made the decision not only to keep it, but to move it to a better spot. I’d be happy if I learned it was a native dense sedge as my husband thinks.

black hawthorne – cretaegus douglasii

Ah – the Hawthorne! Long ago we lived in a trailer park next to a large open space full of nasty Himalayan blackberries (very invasive) and a lot of native plants (including the afore-mentioned oxeye daisy). This little tree was bulldozed a couple times by our landlord and chewed on a lot by the local black tail deer population. When we purchased our house, my husband dug this up (it was about 3′ tall at the time) and planted it in the ground. I believe he was planning on making a Bonsai out of it, but it just loved its new location.

trumpet honeysuckle – lonecera cilosa

I bought a honeysuckle from a nursery. It is pretty. The aphids love it. But I *really* wanted a native one. Last summer, my husband and I made a foraging trip into the Cascades and found this growing there. No, I don’t have pics of the flowers (yet), but we know it is a hummingbird plant and it is what I wanted.

But the real story is about the bear. I have only seen one in real life, and that was a grizzly in Yellowstone when I was ten (1965). I take that back: I saw a black bear once as it raced across the road in front of us in Central Oregon. I was in a car. I’ve hiked, camped, and hiked some more, and never seen a bear in the wild that I could count. Until we were digging the honeysuckle. A young black bear was making its way downhill toward us as we finished up our lunch. Not a scary thing, but we had the dog with us (unleashed – we weren’t anywhere near other people or dogs). So we quickly packed up to leave and we let the bear wander off in another direction as we secreted the dog out of the area.

fireweed – amaenerion angustifoliam

I have seen this for sale at garden shows. That factoid makes me laugh: fireweed is invasive. Once you have it in your yard, you will never get rid of it. I know: I planted it. And I ripped it out. It is pretty, I will grant you that. Alaska’s State flower (my daughter tells me that you can tell when winter is near because the fireweed quits blooming in Alaska). It blooms all summer. I found this survivor of the fireweed I killed nearly ten years ago (hahaha!) hiding behind the shed. And I am letting it go because it is better than English Ivy, black nightshade (Solanum americanum), and Himalayn blackberries – all of which we also have (only the nightshade is native).

California bay – umbelluria californica

The birds planted this. I fell in love with it. I trim it up and will allow it to grow, It is not the same as a Bay Laurel, but it smells the same and you can use the leaves the same. Pretty yellow flowers in the early spring. Easy keeper.

This is just the beginning of a blog post I have been mulling for quite some time: what native plants do we already have in our garden? It began as a small idea but I soon discovered I have more native plants than I previously thought – and some plants I thought were native are really “naturalized” introductions (foxglove, common mullein, ground or creeping juniper). It also grew with the photos ♥

Read Full Post »

I Committed

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 5, 2025| Leave a Comment »

I purchased an electric small rototiller.

Inexpensive and probably not highly rated, but perfect for all I want it to do, which isn’t much more than knock down the sod so I can plant more things.

But I had a heck of a time putting it together until I handed it to my husband and he had it assembled in 15 minutes. i hate men.

I tested it on a muddy section of yard (it is far too muddy to be doing anything right now, but this was just a test patch).

That’s what I want to achieve. So – I have the small rototiller I want and it works like I want and I should be able to post more about how I have opened up areas to more garden space. It does bounce around and work my back, but not like the old way of doing things with the manual edger. Yay.

ANNNND I ordered three roses from Jackson-Perkins. Their roses run from $35 – $44 but the day I decided to order two more roses, they had a special going for “3 roses for $75”. OY. Can’t pass that up! I have two yellow and one white English Tea roses coming.

  1. Oregold – a tried and true fragrant yellow rose
  2. Soft Whisper
  3. St. Patrick

Last year, for whatever reason, they sent me my rose in February and it was too cold to plant. I’ve never had this issue with J&P before. It was strange and the rose died, but I’m giving them a second chance since they have always been reliable over the last 40 years I have ordered from them. I will post when they come in and I plant them, but I am pleasantly surprised that they have not shipped them too early. I think last year was a fluke.

Read Full Post »

Garden Art

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on February 13, 2025| 2 Comments »

I don’t have a gardening post tonight.

This is the view off our deck this morning; it has since morphed to freezing rain on top of the two inches of already slick snow.

Yesterday, the sun was shining. I took a few photos of some of the yard art I have hanging around, just some bottles on Shepherd’s hooks. I make these in the heat of the summer months when it is too hot to garden and too nice out to be inside. I’m not one for air conditioning, shade does me just fine.

Beads, wire, some old bottle or some wine bottles. They serve no purpose other than to hang in my garden. Maybe they ward off evil spirits, but that isn’t why I make them. I make them because I need to keep my fingers busy. The spider web in the background is another summertime project done with beads and fine copper wire.

I make other things, too.

A mobile out of jingle bells and a resin hummingbird.

Or I just hang several things together: some rusty barbed wire, an “owl” my bonus daughter gave me (I think it was supposed to be a bird feeder, but the mesh is too large to hold seeds). I added marbles instead – we have no lack of of shiny objects! A newel post from a crib (that needs repainting).

I made a mobile out of old scrap metal I found in my son’s boxes in the attic (those I did not pass on to his children or widow) and rusty things in our yard. Odd things that I attached to a broken butterfly wind chime. A little copper wire and 20# fishing line ties it all together.

The Crescent Moon. This was in a pile of garbage some <expletive> contractor dumped in a favorite camping spot of ours, one we will never get to revisit because the road has been closed for six years. It is a portion of a fiberglass window. The rest of the garbage was just that: fiberglass, broken wood, and things that should have been hauled to a landfill, but there was this with its rounded edges and crooked break. I etched the face and inked it in. It spins in the breeze.

Beauty out of ashes. Beauty out of garbage. There’s an object lesson there. Make something beautiful out of the life you are handed, even when someone dumps a load of crap in your lap. Let God make something beautiful out of the garbage heap and scraps of your life. Repurpose the discards.

Simple things.

Read Full Post »

Muse

Posted in Uncategorized on April 15, 2024| Leave a Comment »

I lost my muse.

Or she lost me.

I have looked everywhere.

I have waited patiently.

And impatiently.

I have tried to push her into coming back.

Cajole. Beg. Plea.

She remains silent.

Her back turned to me. Against me.

I asked the clouds.

They haven’t seen her.

I asked the flowers. No reply.

I am lost without her.

I try to pick out colors to paint with.

I think I almost see her –

She vanishes. Ethereal. Silent.

I am only half a person without her.

My fingers hover over the keyboard.

No words flow.

I lost my muse.

Or she lost me.

Read Full Post »

A Walk in my Friend’s Shoes

Posted in Uncategorized on March 7, 2024| Leave a Comment »

I am coming up on my 50th high school reunion, which, of course, has made me a tad bit nostalgic. Not that high school was all that wonderful, but it was a far cry from the misery of elementary and middle school – and it was in a small town where folks tend to be more sentimental about those things. Not all folks, but… And I am not even sure why I care.

I only survived high school because of Jay.

We were a month into my freshman year when my father’s employment uprooted our comfortable life in the town where I had suffered through elementary and middle school. My brother was a senior. My sister was in the 6th grade. I had this one disadvantage to my siblings: I was – and remain – a very shy individual. An introvert. My experience in my younger years made me gun shy of making new friendships. I didn’t trust people. And, of course, I was only focused on what the move was doing to MY life, not my brother’s senior year plans or my sister’s tender age as she entered the world of middle school and all of the baggage of pre-teen pressures. They were on their own.

I was a late developer. At the age of 13, I stood 4’11” and weighed possibly 85#. I looked like a 6th grader and felt like one in the halls of a strange school with giants all around me.

The kids surrounding me had grown up together like the kids I had just left behind. Cliques (and “pecking orders”) were established. In my old school, I was on the lower echelon of the strata, but I had friends who could protect me. I was now in unfamiliar territory, with no friends to circle the wagons for me. I had to develop a strategy of porcupine quills and I had to fake being an extrovert. I just wanted to curl up in a ball and cry.

Enter Jay. I may remember it wrongly, but it seemed like it was the first day of being in a school that overwhelmed all of my senses, and going into a lunchroom with my sack lunch and no idea where I would sit – or with whom. My brother, ever the extrovert, had already established himself and couldn’t be relied on (he spent his senior year following me down the halls, making fun of the way I walk: “Quack! Quack! I’m a duck!” – loudly).

I stood there, confused and dazed when Jay came over and told me I could sit with her.

We never had any classes together, but for the next three years we met every lunch hour. We never did an overnight thing except once when I stayed at her house on Hallowe’en before her family moved to a homestead out of town and she had to ride the bus. She was never involved in any of the civic or class things I was in. She came to school and went home, period. But she was there for every single lunch period.

We had so much in common: a miserable first 9 years in public school. Bottom rung of the social strata. Same size shoes (we traded shoes every morning in 10th – 12th grade, switching them back out when we had to go home). Sense of humor. Sense of loyalty. Introverts. November birthdays. Names that began with the letter “J”.

Most of those years there were three of us: the cowgirl, Tina, Jay, and me. Whenever a new kid showed up at school, we took them in to have lunch with us and ease their introduction into our high school. Most of those moved onto other social engagements, but Jay, Tina, and I… The three musketeers.

Tina talked me into joining the Rodeo Club even though I did not have a horse or any hope in h*** of getting one. We sponsored school dances, the food cart at football games, and the annual junior rodeo. We did fund raisers together. Tina and Jay always were jealous of my friendship and never hesitated to gossip about each other. I stayed as neutral in the middle as I could: Jay was my first, and best, friend. I was not about to turn on that kind of friendship.

I remember one girl we took in when she was new at our high school. She pulled me aside to tell me I could “do so much better than her”, meaning Jay. I could just quit being friends with Jay and be her friend, and we’d be popular. I was truly shocked. WHY would I do that? Whatever I told that girl… she never talked to me again. And I didn’t care: my friendship with Jay was more important.

Why not four years? Well, Jay fell in love. Near the end of our Junior year in high school, she started spending most of her time with a boy. I was invited at lunch, of course, but who wants to be a third wheel? We still switched shoes every day, but we didn’t go to lunch together. I had developed other friendships and had other people I could go to lunch with besides Jay or Tina. I still spent time with Tina because she could go to after-school events and, well, Rodeo Club.

Jay got married a few weeks before we graduated. She went on to be a mother and a wife, and she went where he went. I tried college out and failed at that. I wandered, always falling back on my high school strategy of pretending I was not a true-to-form introvert. I made friends. I moved to Oregon, met a man, got married, became a mom and wife. We lost touch.

There’s a twist to the story, of course: Jay’s husband (and our classmate), Dee. I hadn’t been in favor of the marriage: we were too young. Dee “stole” my best friend from me. I had lots of excuses. I was against anything that led a young girl down the traditional role of wife and mother (I repented when I fell in love). My porcupine quills were out when it came to the love between Jay and Dee. But it was Dee who tracked me down in an age before social media, computers, and cell phones. It was Dee who called me out of the blue and gave me their phone number and address.

We lost touch again. And it was Dee who found me on social media. It was Dee who always found me and tried to get us back together as best friends, and I think I owe Dee as much as I owe Jay for her friendship during the years when I was full of angst and teenage drama.

I know where Jay is these days. She raised sons. We still have a lot in common, but we aren’t very close on social media. I keep in touch with Dee more than Jay, but we never forget each other’s birthdays. I know, for instance, that Jay will not come to our 50th class reunion (but I messaged them and asked anyway). High school memories are not as sweet for Jay and Dee as they are for me. They grew up in the same small town and endured the same social status for the 12 years they were in school with the same people. I would probably feel that way if I had attended twelve years of school with my elementary and middle school friends. 

Tina died last year. I lost touch with her as well. I only learned of her passing when an email was sent out listing everyone we have lost over the past 50 years and there was her name. My cowgirl friend who liked peanuts in her cokes and twisted my hippie arm into being in the Rodeo Club with her.

I don’t know why I am excited for this class reunion. Maybe to make amends with people I offended when I was still a porcupine. Maybe to see how my other friendships panned out. I did have other friendships. It won’t be the same without the girl whose shoes I wore for three years. Hers were always worn out in just the right places. My feet felt right in her shoes. I have never traded shoes with another living soul. It’s not hygienic.

But Jay’s shoes always fit.

Read Full Post »

Lola Mae Shaw

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on February 15, 2024| 4 Comments »

I went to visit an old friend today. She lives at a senior “assisted living” place on the west side of the Portland Metro area. My oncologist’s office is less than five miles from where my friend now resides, so when I make a trip to see one of the doctors there, I try to drop in on my friend.

Our visits never last an hour. She gets tired. I can’t stand nursing homes. Today, we didn’t make it past twenty minutes because she was falling asleep on me. She doesn’t look good. Do any old people resigned to living in such a space look good?

I’ve been to a number of these places over the years, and they always leave me depressed. Seeing a dear friend in the early winter of her life… That’s more depressing.

This friend was once my superior at my job. She was brilliant. Dedicated. A mathematical wizard and an innovator. Faithful to the company and the men who ran that company. She worked for a little over minimum wage, lived in a single-wide trailer, and raised three children on very little income. There was no pension plan for us at the company, only what we earned over the years that was socked away into Social Security.

She mentored me over several years. I discovered I had a small gift at mathematics under her tutelage. She had a sense of humor, a lot of dreams, and a keen mind. We went from paper files, paper storage, to digital files and even a program that could do the math for us. My friend stayed current with all those changes in her senior years. She was a legacy.

But change is inevitable, and the company sold out to a corporation that didn’t value the small people. One by one, friends and coworkers faced the axe, not the least of which was my friend. My entire department went under the axe, except for me. I left voluntarily before they could figure out a replacement for my job.

For a while there, all of us got together and had lunch or dinner together. Even that got old as we moved on to new jobs or our retirement plans.

I think it was about five years ago that my friend lost her youngest child to brain cancer. That was the beginning of the end: it is difficult to recover from the loss of a child. My friend was already faltering physically: a broken hip that set her back several weeks, an income that didn’t support her anymore, a mind that no longer fired on all eight cylinders (if my friend had been a car, she would have been a V-8: luxury, speed, and staying power. I’d be a V-6).

We talked on the phone. We called on our birthdays. We no longer had restaurant dates together. My child died. My friend found herself in a walker and in a nursing home. Pardon, an “assisted living” home. The first time I visited her there was in 2020. I have been sporadic ever since, but more regular since the cancer scare of last year. After all, my oncologist’s office is nearby.

My friend was frail and tiny in 2020. She looked much older than her 80+ years. Much tinier than I had ever known her. Her mind was still sharp, however. She was angry that she had “lost everything” in the move from her trailer to assisted living. All her collectibles. The comfort of her own home. Most of her wardrobe. Her car. Her independence. But not her memory.

Her birthday is next week. I took her a birthday card today. She no longer walks, even with a walker. Today was the first time in three years that there was no sign about Covid being “in the building” somewhere, but I masked up anyway. She hates it when I wear a mask because I don’t look like me. She doesn’t look like herself.

We talked about our coworkers and who still visits her in the home: three of us coworkers and the one son who lives nearby. Her great grands haven’t been by in a while. She’s angry. She’s resigned. She’s not ready to die. But we both know Death is hovering on the horizon, closer than she wants to admit. She struggled to stay awake during my visit.

I will be back over there in March. I’m not certain that my friend will still be there. I do know that her son will remember to notify me when she goes. I hope she will be there.

I hate going there. I hate the idea of ending up like my friend: unable to walk, tied to a bed, only a TV to entertain me with old reruns, and a small handful of people who remember to call or visit. I know she isn’t ready to die, but I also know if I was in her position, I’d be thinking of ways to end my life already. I’m too selfish to want to waste away by millimeters in a building with other dying people, and in a room with some stranger.

I understand why my mother-in-law fought so hard to get out of assisted living and back in her home with a nurse coming by daily. I understand even more why my father quit taking his medications three months before the effects caught up with him and he died in his own home, still independent. I understand why my mother, at the age of 63, chose to stop breathing rather than be tied to an oxygen machine for the rest of her life. There is nothing gratifying about lingering death. There is nothing enticing about waiting while the Grim Reaper bides its time.

Death either comes in like a freight train or it slimes in as slow as a slug. So – tonight – lift a glass of whatever it is you drink and toast my Lola. I said good-bye today and kissed her forehead. I don’t know if I will get another chance. And for those of you who have a loved one in a nursing home, assisted living space, or hospital: go visit. I don’t care how uncomfortable it makes you feel. Hold their hand. Feel the papery skin. Remember for them. Remember them.

Read Full Post »

Channeling My Inner Seamstress

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on January 18, 2024| 2 Comments »

Sometimes I think my life is just a cautionary tale. I do some very dumb things. Point in case is my most recent sewing “adventure”.

I am in the midst of Spring Cleaning (there’s nothing else to do other than work on some artwork or writing and January is always a good time to give the house a yearly purge). I’m not a great housekeeper to begin with, but the yearly purge cleaning makes me feel like there is hope for me. So far, it is going well: I’ve done the bathroom, the hall, the bedroom, and the kitchen. The kitchen always presents the greatest challenge because there is no hood over the gas range. No exhaust fan. A lot of grease, dust, and food fumes go into the house atmosphere and settle on top of things: the cupboards, the refrigerator top, the things I have on top of those items for display or storage, and the uncovered appliances.

Over the years I have developed a strategy of putting waxed paper on top of the cupboards and refrigerator and this helps immensely when I am finally moved to clean in places I can’t see. I roll up the filthy wax paper and dispose of it. I still have to do a fair bit of wall washing and cleaning of the items that have been stored on top of those places. I try to get to this task quarterly, but it more often falls biannually. The top of the fridge can sometimes go an entire year. I’m short; the fridge is tall. What I don’t see doesn’t affect me.

Well, it does. But summer comes and I am outside playing in dirt and I don’t pay much attention to the top of the refrigerator.

This year, it dawned on me that there was probably a more sustainable way to do this. I’m only 67 and have been married for almost 44 years. I’m a little slow on the uptake, OK?

Instead of using disposable wax paper, I could use picnic tablecloth fabric which can be tossed into a washer while I clean the tops of things. Oh, and I could sew covers for all the appliances that are currently covered with plastic garbage can bags or kitchen towels to reduce the dust accumulated between uses and/or cleaning sprees.  I am so brilliant that I can’t see my own reflection!

I thought the garbage bags and kitchen towels were a pretty neat idea when I thought of those. I didn’t factor in how ugly that looks and how easily garbage bags tear.

I should mention that I live with a dog. Sometimes more than one dog, but always a dog. And dogs track in dust and mud and they shed. We’ve never owned a dog that didn’t shed although I know they exist. My husband’s birddogs do not fit into that niche of neat dogs to own. Birddogs are more like perpetual toddlers with very large feet that collect substantial amounts of mud between the toes. One birddog we owned had hair like a porcupine’s quills: she didn’t have long hair but what hair she did have went into the fabric of chairs and rugs, never to be pulled out again. She’s been gone for 16 years and we still have furniture with short white hairs stuck into the fabric. The longer haired dogs just shed copious amounts of fluff. (photo: the dog. Ruger.)

I digress. I decided I would not only cover the top of the fridge with a fabric I could wash, but that I would sew covers for the appliance like my pressure canner, the crockpot, and various Dutch ovens. My stand alone mixer already has a cover over it, hence the brilliant idea.

I don’t sew. Not much. I can sew, that has never been the issue. I’m just not in love with sewing. My mother was the woman who sewed all of our school clothes, our Christmas pajamas, and a million other little things including Barbie outfits. If she didn’t have a pattern, she made a pattern. One of my best friends is an accomplished seamstress who tutored one of my daughters. That friend creates beautiful costumes for cosplay and Renaissance faires. Both of my daughters went to someone else to learn how to sew.

I’m not a terrible seamstress. It is simply not a passion. And for decades the only sewing machine I had was my mother’s Singer Featherweight. A few years ago I splurged and bought a newer model Singer with fancier stitches and I have used that since (when I have had the notion to sew). I even made a cover for it. I was on my game when I made the cover: dimensions, seams, hem: perfect. (photo: the sewing machine under cover)

I was not on my game this time around. I made all the proper measurements. The blue canner has a diameter of 15”. If I made the cover plus a skirt, the skirt length would need to be 8”. Of course, you need to add an inch for seams and hems, so the canner lid would be 16” and the skirt would need to be 9”. Circumference is easy, too, if you remember your formula from school. That’s (r+d)2 + c. You can skip the math, however: I found some pretty cool apps on the Interwebs that do the calculating for you.

I had some calico fabric laying around, but not enough to do the skirts – only enough to do the tops of all the appliances. So I figured out how much more calico I would need and what color. I knew at the outset of the project that I would be piecing fabric together rather than sewing perfect little matching covers. I also calculated about how much picnic tablecloth fabric I would need (not factoring in the width of the cloth on the bolt which is an unknown until you actually go to the fabric store. Can’t hurt to have too much.

I wrote out my list, took a photo of the calico I was using for the tops, and went to the local fabric store with coupons. 20% off the entire purchase plus 40% off one regular priced item (the picnic tablecloth fabric). Everything was on sale except for that. Thread, calico, hemming tape. I had it all figured out in my head. (I never needed the hemming tape and I already had green thread on a spool on my sewing machine – oops.)

The tablecloth fabric was wide enough that I not only got the refrigerator covered, but I have enough left over for a couple of the hanging cabinet tops. No sewing required, but it will easily wash clean in a gentle cycle. One item off my list!

I prewashed everything, then set about making the measurements (measure twice) before making the cuts (cut once). THEN I realized I had used my initial measurements, not the measurements plus seam allowances. I cut the blue canner top at 15”, not 16”. Oh.For.Crying.Out.Loud. And we’re in the middle of an ice storm so running back to the fabric store is out of the question, plus I didn’t want to waste the money. (Bangs head on desk and posts woes on Facebook.)

Not to worry: I had enough fabric to recut the circles, plus I could trim some of the larger ones down to fit the smaller items (e.g. the blue canner could be cut down to fit one of the Dutch ovens with an 11” diameter). Whew.

I carefully measured the skirts according to my circumference calculations. I was short fabric for the crock pot. Dang. I would address that last, I decided. Now was the time for the ironing and the sewing to begin and all would be well. I could do this.

I calculated the circumference from the original figures. Remember the blue canner? (7.5+15)2=45” Only I NEEDED (8+16)2=48”. OY VEY.

But not to fear: I could still use the skirts, add a ribbon at the bottom to create a tie (fresh out of elastic, but that would have worked as well). I just had to sew seams all around plus remember to sew the ribbons on. And it worked! (Photo: before – under the garbage bag, then with the tie at the back, and turned so you can’t see the tie)

I still didn’t have the crock pot figured out. It’s oblong, for one thing. The calculations are going to be different. And I was out of enough calico to make that happen, anyway. But I do have a number of old tablecloths I have picked up at yard and estate sales and… Yes, I cut up a (stained) vintage tablecloth to make it work. I do not regret that decision. (Photos: before with the kitchen towel, after with the tablecloth skirt)

I am not unhappy with the results; it just took more effort than I expected. And it showed just how (ahem) cautionary a tale I can be. And, yes, I had to use the seam ripper a couple times when I forgot to make certain I was sewing fabric face-to-face. That’s my least favorite sewing tool.

Read Full Post »

2024 – What Are Your Plans?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 31, 2023| 1 Comment »

 In a few hours (here in the Pacific Northwest) it will be a new year. What are your Apocalypse plans?

We watched the Obama’s movie, “Leave the World Behind”. It stars Julia Roberts and is streaming on Netflix. It leaves you hanging at the end, which is very disappointing. What happens after New York City implodes? Do the families decide they can overcome race issues? Do they have the skills to survive in a new world? Why are they leaving us hanging?

I downloaded J.K. Franks’ Apocalypse series (there are four: three in the series and a stand-alone that ties into the others). Book #1 “Downward Cycle” is scary. The next three have a bit too much luck in the survival game, rather like “Zombieland” (with Woody Harrelson and highly recommended for the survivalist). No, wait: Franks’ books become almost as believable as John Cusack and his family out-running the earthquakes in L.A. and ending up in Yellowstone in the apocalypse movie “2012”.

I don’t want to give away any spoilers because I thoroughly enjoyed Franks’ books (and I recommend them to the next generation survivor), but sometimes help is a little too convenient.

Enter the current book I am reading “Post-Apocalyptic Nomadic Warriors” by Benjamin Wallace. It’s a farcical tale that draws a lot on the “Mad Max” movie series (starring Mel Gibson and Tina Turner).

Serious question: What are YOUR Apocalypse plans? Do you have any? What about Zombie apocalypse (less likely to happen because zombies are really a voodoo thing and don’t eat brains: they just haunt people who are cursed. People who are cursed by whoever raised the zombie from the dead, like some voodoo doctor).

Do you have a “bug-out bag”? What is in it? Do you have a place to land that is hidden, remote, and unlikely to be overrun by gangs of heathens when the world collapses? What about transportation in case of an EMP or a CME (Coronal Mass Ejection or solar flare)? Stockpiles of foods, preferable purchased from one of the many survivalist groups who advertise liberally on Facebook?

DO YOU HAVE A PLAN?

I used to have a plan in case of a Zombie Apocalypse: I would move in with my youngest. She disowned me sometime in the past six years, so I don’t really have that option. I do know you need a shovel, a machete, and a ladder: you can cut zombie’s head off and they lose all sense of smell and direction and you need the ladder to help you get onto the roof of your house because zombies can’t climb (until you watch “World War Z” and they just pile the bodies up until they can ascend to the top of the walls and fall over into the compound, ready to eat brains). I am woefully behind on zombie survival skills.

In the event of a CME or EMP, what are you gonna do? Banks won’t be able to dispense money. Money will be worthless. Food will be necessary, and clean water. Will you be able to trust the government? Will guns help you survive the threat of marauders and scavengers? What about ammo? Can you trust your neighbors? Can you drive a car with a standard transmission?

Can you trust the deer to warn you (as in the movie “Leave the World Behind”?)

How far away is your bug-out shelter? Is it really that remote that no one will think to look for you there? Or maybe you can hide under a silo like “Love and Monsters” where the hero travels above ground to find his high school sweetheart after the nuclear apocalypse? (Spoiler:Dylan O’Brien survives and befriends a dog).

For me, however, the biggest question is this: how old are you? What’s your health like? Are you on maintenance meds? Are you a member of a particular circle of people who might have enough survival skills to start a new society?

A friend of mine brought this up when we were camping this past summer: her genre happens to include people involved in Renaissance Faires. The Society of Creative Anachronism and other groups that aspire to the days of the past: black powder groups, rendezvous groups, and Ren Faire groups. Of course, they would have many of the skills to survive in a non-tech world. That’s what they have been play-acting at for the past few decades. The issue would be this: where do you fit into their structure?

I have herbal knowledge, although it is small. Edible plants and a few edible mushrooms. I have enough books to help guide us through any questions (but no way to transport my books). My husband is a hunter. My friend is a seamstress. Those are necessary skills, but they fall behind the basic skill of surviving marauding murderers and desperate scavengers. We’d have to rely on the swords-people and the black powder survivalists.

The truth is this: I am 67. I need certain medicines to survive longer than a few months. I can cook from scratch, drive a stick shift, handle a firearm, and hide in the woods. But the cold seeps into my bones and makes the joints ache. I have camped much of my life without potable water, ice, and a place to take a dump. I can sleep on the ground. But I am 67 years old.

The cars we own will be disabled. We might be able to rig up a radio. We have a store of food. Our children live far away. I’m an artist, a bird-watcher, and a gardener. My husband has heart issues. Were we younger, we could hike for miles and miles. But we’re not younger.

The reality is this: we would be a burden on society and the future. If mankind isn’t headed into a total extinction event, we would not be the people you would want to pin the future on. We would be the decoys.  

I have my post apocalypse plans. I won’t tell you what they are. But I really want to know what yours are? No need to tell me where you will bug-out to, just tell me what is in your survival arsenal? What advice would you give to those who survive (and are much younger than I am)? Do you have a shovel ready to swipe the head off of an attacking zombie?

These are important questions for 2024.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »