We Love Good News

The post-colonoscopy report was excellent! We are so relieved and happy. The doctor was happy as well and told Roger that he won't need any future colonoscopies. Good news for an 80 year old geezer!

We'll be happy dancing and shouting our gratitude out to the universe for the peace this news brings. Now we can concentrate on the beauty of our little world.

The succulents in our garden are natural mandalas of peace. 

And the color of this rose just makes us happy for having enough free attention to see its beauty. 

And, of course, the piece de resistance, a wee bit of Coirvoisier. Ah tres bien, tres bien. 

It's Prepping Day

  Today is the day that Roger begins his prep for a colonoscopy on Tuesday. 

For those of you who have never had a colonoscopy, let's just say that this is not a fun day at all. It's a crappy day to say the least. But he's done it before, and knows what to expect. Back in 2010 Roger's doc suggested to him that he have a colonoscopy. He'd never had one before so he complied. The bad news was colon cancer followed by the good news of a successful surgery. Roger wrote about it here two years ago on the 10th anniversary. 

So it's been five years since the last colonoscopy and he figured it was time. So today is the prep day. First thing he has to do is go to the hospital at 8:30 am for a pre-colonoscopy Covid test. We are so appreciative of their  diligence about that. After that nose swab he will come home to this. In the above photo you will see the Prep Kit. That's for Monday. The Ensure and BioK extra is for after the colonoscopy on Tuesday  to help restore nutrition and rebuild the flora of the colon. 

The Courvoisier is for a bit later in the day to help him smile and forget the whole experience. 

We'll keep you posted. And thank you for all the good wishes we know you'll be sending his way.

Fall Is Coming...

 .....and we are cleaning up the garden.
 

these are red runner bean plants on a trellis. they were on trial. which means that when i shopped for string bean seeds i saw those bright red flowers and was sold. well. the vines grew prolifically and flowered vigorously and stopped for a couple of weeks. then erupted into full on bean growing. 

but the string beans were kinda flat and got tough very quickly. also not at all amenable to harvesting ala lima beans. so we didn't eat very many beans but we did appreciate the bright red flowers. 

we feel the approach of fall so we cut the the beautiful flowers and not so tasty pods from the trellis.
 

we eat a lot of kale. this is one of 3 beds. we have 3 varieties. would you believe that kale is harder to give away than zucchini?

basil. flowering

we are getting to the last of the carrots.

potatoes grew here

Just Some Fun

I went out to photograph this lovely cloud formation, a light and wispy vertebratus formation below the sun.

When I downloaded the photos I noticed the big cloud down on the lower left. It made me laugh. How did I miss that cloud raising its arms for its successful hurdling over that tree. I love when a cloud jumps over a tree like that. LOL. 

For another laugh, I thought I'd share this photo that I posted on Facebook the other day. Roger went out to pick some carrots from the garden.

This is what he brought in. We had such a good laugh. We didn't know that carrots would hug and snuggle like this. Such a sweet (literally) embrace. 

And after all this time you would think we'd remember to check on the zucchinis out in the garden...

... but we forget every summer. This is our latest harvest. LOL!

It's good to laugh at jumping clouds, snuggling carrots, and zucchinis bigger than you'd ever guess they'd get. 

I Love Fossils

 I love fossils so much that I chose Evolutionary Anthropology for my major in college. I love the story ancient bones tell. If you search on the blog on the word "fossil" you'll see all the posts I've done over the years. The beach in Capitola was covered in rocks filled with fossils. A minus tide was my favorite time to walk along the cliff wall and see the ancient history of animals that had been there long before humans ever stepped a foot there. 

I found these two Sand Dollar fossils on the beach in Port Townsend, WA back in 2006. I gathered them up, brought them home and have treasured their little ancient histories. 

So, when I saw a young boy a couple of months ago literally trying to sell rocks out in front of his house, I had to take a look. What a surprise it was to see this beautiful fossil he had among his rocks. 

I bought it and brought this ancient treasure home. What a history it has to tell. How did they all get there together like this? 

Then, my neighbor had a yard sale this past weekend. I went and took a look. She had lots of random stuff from dishes to clothes on her front lawn, and tables filled with china and crystal. But among all of that, I found this.

Oh be still my heart! I couldn't believe the beauty of this ancient fish in this ancient rock. There was even a little fish on the back of it.

So I jumped for joy and brought this ancient beauty home with me. For me, fossils are poems in stone.

And So It Begins

 Fire season here in California. The first summer fires have been burning. One is burning about 40 miles (64 km) east of us. Our air is still clear, but I could see the light smoky skies already. 

This photo looks like an eastern view of a sunset sky. It's not. It's a mid-afternoon view of the smoke coming from the Six River Complex fire. We're hoping it will be contained sometime next week. As summer is drawing to a close, lots of people travel here to hike and go camping. Mistakes are made, fires are started. We wait to see what comes next. 

It's been pretty quiet here. We haven't been able to get out and walk very much because my osteoporotic hip has been giving me way too much pain to even walk a mile. I'm worried. Would I do surgery? Hip replacement? Crazy medications? I don't think so. Mmmm? 

So I'm amusing myself with things I see from the car window as we drive into and back from town on our simple errands.

We watched the painter creating this the other day. She was working on the third mandala at the bottom. On Sunday, as we drove by I clicked the photo. The world should be filled with the beauty of art like this. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

After The Dentist

The best part of going to the dentist, really the only good part about going to the dentist here is that this is the view on our drive home.

We love the Mad River as it flows into the Pacific on a clear, warm, and beautiful sunshiny summer day. 

And what made it even better was watching one Harbor Seal as it headed back into the ocean while the rest slept peacefully on the beach in the summer sun. 

All of this almost makes going to the dentist a fun thing!

Skunks and Tomatoes

In the middle of the night last week I smelled a skunk in the yard. They often come around in the summertime and dig through our compost bin and yard. I didn't think anything of it until I went out the next morning to take a look at the garden. 

Wow! Something had been munching on our ripening tomatoes. Would a skunk do that? Well, I had to check the internet to find an answer. I was surprised. The answer was yes. Skunks will eat tomatoes. The next night, the skunk came back and munched on another almost ripe tomato. So, we harvested all the nearly ripe tomatoes and brought them in to ripen in the house.

There's the second skunk-damaged tomato just before we tossed it into the compost bin. We're hoping these almost-ripe tomatoes will taste as sweet as they usually do when they ripen on the vine. There are more out there that will need early harvesting soon. 

We won't let those little stinkers win! LOL! Have you ever had critters eat your tomatoes? We'd love to know.

In other garden news, we harvested the biggest potato we've ever grown.

That's our veggie harvest for one evening. Yum!

Time For A New Printer

I had a plan. I was going to pick out a photo of Roger that I had taken on one of our walks and hikes and print it for his birthday card. I make a birthday card for him every year. I found a photo that I loved. I went to print it. The printer would only print it black and white. It was crazy. So, I thought I'd experiment with other photos to see if the same problem would occur.

I chose this photo to print, an iridescent cloud I had photographed just a few days ago. It had some nice soft colors and plenty of blue. This is what the printer saw.

I took a screenshot of the print mode. That's a black and white pic of an iridescent cloud in a blue blue sky. Mmmm? 

So then we turned on our very, very old PC. Thought we'd give that a try to see if the printer would print in color from that old machine since they are of the same ancient era. Why yes it did. It printed in color. Mmmm?

So, we surmised that our brand new MacBook Air system updates made our old printer a dinosaur in this new age of computers.

Definitely time for a new printer now.... or I could start buying actual birthday cards. Hah!

PS Thank you all for your kind and thoughtful birthday wishes to Roger. We loved them. The best part of the internet!

It's My Birthday

 We make a big deal out of birthdays at the beginning of each decade. More so in early life and in old age it seems. the middle parts of life kinda slide by with less fuss. So here I am entering my eighties. I don’t feel any different than I did yesterday or the day before that. In some ways I am still every age I have been so far. My body does though give me evidence of my age with aches and pains and lately strange feelings in my head.

I am partial to Buddhist philosophy. part of which is stuff about living many lives, waking to a bigger picture with each life if things go well. Not sure what I think about that. I do though appreciate the advice to live the life we have with awareness of each moment. To be fully present in each moment.

One of my favorite philosophers, Allen Ginsberg, here demonstrates mindfulness