End of November Photos

Good-bye, November. I am not sorry to see you go.

Great Expectations...

...are often followed by Great Disappointments. This is how we find ourselves, three and a half months after my mom moved in with us, helping her plan her great escape. Ah, I make light of it, but it is sad for all of us. So many factors contributed to her wanting to make the move back to southern California. Some of it was boredom, loneliness for more human interaction, more rain in two months than she's seen in 20 years, and the usual friction between mothers and daughters when historical roles are both reversed and revised by dementia, and sheer cantankerousness on both our parts.

We all tried, we really did. Roger and I are both very quiet, self-contained people. We can spend hours and hours directing our attention to things that interest us: gardening, photography, backyard birds, sun and moon rises and sets, atmospheric optics, cooking and baking. Most of these things are done with hardly a word spoken, but just single-minded intent to get things done. It didn't occur to us that ongoing conversation would be an integral part of my mother's happiness. And really, even though we know now, we still don't have that much to say. See, I'm happily typing this, and I'm not saying a word out loud. Not a good thing for my mom who needs way more stimulation than either one of us could offer.

So, on December 10 my sister is flying up from southern California, and the two of them are heading back on the 13th. My mom is moving into an assisted living facility that's only 1.7 miles from my sister's house, much closer than the previous facility. We're all hoping this will be a good move for her, that she will be more socially engaged and stimulated there. I told her that it's probably a good idea for her to play with people her own age. We both laughed.

This not how we thought it would go, but this is how it's going. I have a whole new respect for people who can live multi-generationally and do it successfully. I once believed that that was how it "should" be. Now I'm pretty convinced it most definitely is not. Not anymore. Not the way we do it in the modern world. Not in these times of the broken vestiges of the ancient human family. It doesn't work.

garden update november 1

garden posts are for us to have some record as it is not easy to remember what and when we planted. garden news is also a nice respite from all the other news. and it is fun to share. how is your garden doing? yes, the pictures were taken nov 1. i am a bit late posting.

two views of the beds which will get some sun all winter. carrots, beets(red and white), lettuce, kale(three kinds, two ravaged by bugs), chard(rainbow), and peas. we did roughly plan for winter stuff but this really worked out very well. we are due to get some cedar trees behind the west fence trimmed, which will give these beds much more sunlight this winter.

this bed has chard and beets. it will get very little sun til march. the tree trimming will give it a bit more but the house next door blocks it most of the day.

Two Snowy Egrets

We saw these two Snowy Egrets out at the marsh. We imagined they were having a conversation. 

They walked along just chatting away. Perhaps it was about our country and the most recent election.

Yes, that must have been it. Because suddenly they simply turned their backs on each other and went their separate ways.

I love when birds tell us a story.

Almost Wordless Wednesday: Bovines

Whenever we take the drive from Arcata to Eureka we pass through pasture lands for dairy cows. We often see hundreds of cows as we go zooming by.

I'll confess that we always say hello and MOO to them as we drive past. They probably know us by now.

The other day on one of the trips to take my mom to the dentist, we saw something that was definitely not cow. It was bovine for sure.

We drove past, waved, said "hello buffalo," but we didn't know what sound to make. We'll have to find out! Ah, a new project. (Just found the sound a bison makes. Wow! I don't think we can do that one.)

Hope you are all well and recovering from the election. We're still waking in the night with dread and fear.

Our Multi-layered World

Trying to resume some semblance of normalcy after the election results utterly altered our world. How does one begin to absorb what it means to have this person be our President and leader of the strongest nation on the planet? We still waken in the night full of angst and fear and dread. And yet, we rejoice that we live in California and on the full Pacific coast of our country that voted against this moment.

But here we are. Not sure yet what to do, how to proceed, what to expect. So, we do what we always do, we go for a walk. We try to clear our brains of this scattered thinking about things unknown, and focus on something else. Take one step at a time, one foot in front of the other and see something other than his face haunting our dreams.

A multi-layered world spread before us. It was as tall as the wavy clouds; as small the Wigeons and Coots with towers looming behind them; as vast as the shoreline and sky and all that in-between. We start to look for things that he cannot take from us.

We are learning this new world. We are brokenhearted and full of fear for the future, but we are learning. We will march and rally and protest and fight when needed. In the meantime, we will keep walking.

How are you?

Election Fatigue

We are seriously exhausted by this election season. We don't remember a more contentious or nerve-wracking battle in all of our years of paying attention. It's hard to look away, and we don't even watch TV. It just seeps in everywhere. So, we are looking forward to waking Wednesday morning and having all of this behind us. Of course if the racist, bigoted, psychopathic nutcase wins, we're going to be very disappointed for the next four years. Actually as I typed that sentence, I realized it will be way more than disappointment.

Here are a few things we saw when we diverted our attention from the drama of the day.

Green-winged Teal

Two people in the sparkling sun

A Muscovy Duck

Canada Geese at sunrise

Lenticular clouds

See you Wednesday and hoping to celebrate good news.

Wednesday's Skypools

The sun finally came out on Tuesday. So we took a nice long walk at the marsh. There were beautiful skypools there. Some were so interesting I actually made a very short 15-second video, so you can see how it changes.

Here's a still photo of the same scene.

After watching the video, I realized I probably should have videoed this other part of the bay, pictured below.

 The colors and shifting reflections were grand here. I'm not sure why the surface of water doesn't always have such interesting patterns like this, but I'm always glad when they do.

In case you don't click on the link in the first part of this post, this is what Atmospheric Optics says about skypools:

... for skypools are strangely complex. They show sky and land colours but not sky or landscape pictures. They are instead ovals of alternating colour. Some ovals are mostly landscape hues, others are of the sky.

It was a wonderful way to celebrate the reappearance of the sun.