It had been a while since we had gone to the marsh for a walk. Tuesday morning was warm and sunny and so inviting. So we got in the car and headed over there. It was beautiful there too and no wind. That made us so happy. I didn't get to take many photos. There weren't many birds or other marsh animals around. We did get to see this work of art of a River Otter made entirely of cigarette filters. A very interesting idea.
We loved being reminded of why we love autumn.
I was out doing some work in the yard when I noticed this praying mantis.
I am posting this on the blog because it's my place of keeping a record of things like this. Who knows what I might see next!
I received two emails, one on Saturday and one on Sunday. They made me so happy.
The first one was from my twin brother. He sent me this photo he had taken in Santa Cruz.
He looked up at the sky and saw these crepuscular rays. He ran to get the camera and photographed it to send to me. I loved it. I'm hoping that it will inspire him to keep looking up at sky there and see all the beauty that clouds and sun, rays and halos have to offer. It happens everywhere!
Then my sister wrote Sunday morning and reminded me that she had gone to a concert Saturday night in Los Angeles. I had forgotten. She was going to see Ringo Starr play. RINGO! I had asked her to please wave to Ringo for me. She emailed me Sunday morning to say that she had waved to Ringo for me. I can't tell you how happy that made me.
Crepuscular rays and Ringo Starr. Life is good!
It's been a while since I've seen and photographed iridescent clouds here. So on Monday the sky reminded me just how beautiful it can be. I posted these two photos on Facebook, and I wanted to post them here to share with my dear blogging friends. Ah, the beauty of our skies!
Here on the last day of August are three views of our little world here. Summer is drawing to a close.
That is how August ends here on the north coast of California.
This
is what the sky looked like about an hour after sunrise Wednesday
August 16th. The wildfires burning northeast of us always give the
morning and evening skies such interesting colors. It seems crazy that
northern California is already dealing with fires and southern
California is dealing with hurricane/tropical storm Hilary. "Fire
Season" doesn't usually begin until September. And rain in August is
simply unheard of in California. There have only been two tropical
storms in California, one in 1858 and one in 1939.
One of Roger's daughters had to evacuate because of the fires burning so close to her home in the forested mountains of Siskiyou County. She has been here on the coast since Wednesday. The highway to her home has been closed with no news of when that might reopen. It's a winding mountain road, so it may take a while.
One of Roger's daughters is in San Diego where Hilary was predicted to fiercely blow in as it makes its way north and east. The deserts of California could get more rain in one day than it typically gets in two years combined!
Climate change? No way.
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| Sunrise on Saturday in still smoky skies. |
We wait to hear how things are going and always hoping for the best news in all ways.
How are things in your neck of the woods? Hope all is well wherever you are.
When I first wrote this post and had it scheduled to publish at 12:01 am on the 21st of August there were only fires and tropical storms to write about. Then, I got a call from my sister. Southern California had just had a 5.2 earthquake! They actually had a swarm of 7 earthquakes, 5.2 being the largest for now. I think we've reached our limit of insanity here in California. It's time for things to calm down. If anything new happens I'll write about it here.
At around 2:30 am Wednesday morning I was bitten by a spider. I felt something that suddenly made my finger sting like mad. I went into the bathroom, turned on the light to take a look. This is what I saw (photographed later in the daylight).
I was so surprised to see such a thing on my finger like that. I hadn't ever seen anything like it. Have you? I don't think anything else could bite like this but a spider. I googled spider bite images and yes, many do end up looking like this. I was worried, of course, that it could have been a dangerous and poisonous spider, but there wasn't much I could do it about it at 2:30 in the morning. So, I went back to sleep.
I remembered in the morning that if a spider bite is poisonous, it starts to work its way through your body, leaving a red line from the bite as it heads toward your heart or head or somewhere. This blood spot did not change at all. That made me feel safer.
By Thursday it had already gotten smaller and looked like this:
What
a scary thing to wake up to so early Wednesday morning. I did find a
spider hanging out on the wall just above the baseboard later in the
day. I caught it with my bug-catching jar and postcard and then released
it outside. I did tell it that if I saw it again in the house, I was
definitely going to kill it. I think it understood and won't be back.
Spider bites are scary.
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| A few beautiful clouds in July |
Today Roger begins his 81st trip around the sun. I like thinking of age that way, how our earth rotates every 24 hours, but takes a full year to actually go around the sun. We think of the sun rising or setting, but really it's just hanging out in the starry universe, and we're the ones spinning like mad. As we get older we sometimes get dizzier... I guess that explains it a bit. Rotating like that everyday is crazy! We'll be celebrating with family and enjoying when the grandkids sing Happy Birthday to their much-loved grandpa.
I've been sidetracked by health issues. Not anything urgent or sickening, but just reckoning with my aging osteoporosis bones. My primary care physician prescribed a medication for me and I made the mistake of reading about it online. The possible side-effects scared me so much that I sought other answers. Then my siblings started searching for alternatives. We found that there really is only one other medication and that it is relatively new. My doc doesn't feel comfortable prescribing it. So... it looks like I'm going to start the drug journey soon. I'm not happy about it, but that's life in an aging body.
The good news is that it's been sunshiny warm and beautiful here
for a while. We've been out doing our daily neighborhood
walks. We've also been weeding the garden and harvesting green beans,
lettuce, and peas. The tomatoes are ripening very slowly this year, and
the yellow squash seems smaller than usual. It's a bit of an off-year in
the garden. Roger did some soil testing and found that it needed nitrogen. So he did some work and enriched the soil with some. We're hoping to see some improvement soon.
That's life today on Roger's 81st birthday. We hope all is well for you, and thank you for stopping by.
For those of you who have been reading the blog over the years, you know how much we loved the family beach house. It's the house that Roger's grandparents bought in 1938. It stayed in the family until 2019 when he and his siblings decided it was time to sell it. We lived the closest to it, and we were a seven hour (350 mile) drive away. Here's a link to the blog post we did about it when the house was sold.
Well... not only is that house no longer in the family, it is literally gone. My twin brother walks by the house quite often in his early morning walks. He sent us this photo on Friday morning.
The people who bought the house spent the past three years working with the city to finally get their plans approved for knocking that old house down and building one that has to maintain the original footprint of the house.
We were blown away to see that photo. Then, my sister-in-law Kim took a walk there a few hours later and photographed what she could see by sticking her camera through the barrier that had been put in place to protect walkerbys from the rubble.
Not only is the house gone, the tree is gone as well. We were so surprised by that.
It's hard to believe that the old family beach house is really and truly gone, but it is. Kim said that she would like to somehow get in the yard and grab a few rocks from the old fireplace to give to Roger and his siblings. We would love that and hope that she can sneak in there and get some.
We will always remember the house like this:
The reflection of the sun rising above the bay waters in the window of the house that will live in our hearts always.
Good bye, old beach house.
There have been no further brain issues since the seizure early Thursday morning. Roger went to see our primary care physician, and she ran all kinds of tests to test his balance and sensitivity. All went well. That was quite a relief. She requested an MRI brain scan for further and more detailed information. It took us a while to get that scheduled because the hospital wanted the scan order to request a contrast dye, and the one that our doc sent didn't have that. So, now it has been scheduled... for August 28th! We were surprised that he'd have to wait that long, but that's the way things are these days.
We're still able to get out for our walks. So things are feeling a bit more normal, although we are still a little stressed about the whole thing. You just never know anymore what could happen.
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| My twin brother sent us this photo of his white roses for Roger |
It's not the way you expect the day to begin especially at 2:30 in the morning, but it did. Roger was not well. He woke up mumbling, not making any sense, and shaking. I tried to talk with him, but he did not respond. So I did something I've never done before... I called 911 emergency and asked them to please send an ambulance to take Roger to the hospital. I thought he was having a stroke. The 911 person had me ask Roger some questions. He did not respond to any of them. She called the ambulance people and they arrived within minutes. They picked him up from the bed, put him on a stretcher, then into the ambulance and took him to the ER. I followed in our car.
The ER staff took him in right away. It was 2:45 am
and there was no one else in the ER waiting area. They covered him up
and tried to keep him warm. He was still shivering, shaking and not
making any sense. After a while he calmed down, stopped shaking and
started to speak a bit. The very attentive and kind nurse gave him water and tried to keep him
comfortable. A tech guy came in and wheeled Roger off to the place where
they could do a CT scan of his brain. We waited for two hours for the
very brief results (more will came later after more reviews). The
analysis said he had had a brain seizure.
Then they let me take him home. We were both exhausted and blown away by what had just happened. There will be more doctor appointments and tests soon. For now he seems okay.
It's just not the way you ever expect the day to begin...
The bleak gray skies finally gave way to blue skies with actual clouds. The temps warmed up, we've been enjoying every delightful summery moment. Yay! We shout... Yay!
Walking to our car after our shop at the food co-op I noticed this reflection view in the car window next to ours. "Well, hello iridescent reflection," said I. I swear it said, "Take my picture." So I did.
That's the news from the north coast of California where happy people dance in the co-op aisles and in the parking lot too. I'm not mentioning any names. LOL.
I'm reminded of a song lyric these days:
"Oh I can gather all the news I need on the weather report.
Hey, I've got nothing to do today but smile..."
That's us not mentioning you know who and the court case in Florida. It's all about the weather for us these days.
Hope all is well for you, friends. Thank you for stopping by.
I went out to look at the roses in our front yard the other day and was struck by all their different colors.
As the temps warm up for summer here all the flowers are celebrating with their beautiful petal displays of color. We love it.
We hope all is well for you, and we thank you for stopping by.
One of our favorite celebrations in Humboldt County is the Kinetic Sculpture Race. It begins here and takes a 40 mile journey over three days. No motorized vehicles, just human powered joy and beautiful art. We didn't go into to town to see the beginning of this race, but we watched them as they headed down the main road in town. We walked to the corner of our street and got to see some of these magnificent creatures as they made their way out of town. Some of the photos of the race in town are not mine, but were shared on a public site.
Update: I realize I should have put in a description of this race. This is what I found online that I think describes it so well: A local tradition since 1969, the Kinetic Race is no parade! In the Kinetic Grand Championship bodies of art and artist's bodies are put to the test. There's 40 miles to go, over land, sand, water, and mud. These intrepid Kinetinauts are a unique breed of human. With a heart full of joy and a bucket full of tools, they face innumerable obstacles for just one reason ... For the GLORY!
These kinetic sculptures will go along city streets, go through sand dunes and cross rivers. It is a wild journey and they are cheered on all along the way. We watched a news video on Sunday of the Grateful Squid entering the North Bay Channel. A few years ago we went to watch them all enter the water. It's quite a sight!
If
you click on the pics you'll see why we love this event so much. The
creativity and energy are so wonderful. We stood on the corner with many
of our delightful neighbors and cheered these racers on. Yes, for the
glory!
The weather has remained quite gray, overcast, bleak, and without any hint of color at sunrise or sunset. This has been going on for quite a while. So, my older brother in Virginia sent me some photos the other day that he took from his deck.
The colors reminded me of the California Poppy I photographed in our front yard the other day.
We may not have any clear skies here or sunrises or sunsets lately, but we do get to see a bit of color in the blooming beauty of our native flowers. I particularly liked this poppy because of the hues of orange. Most of the poppies are a single dark orange color. This one said, "Well I may not be a sunrise or sunset, but I'll remind you of one every time you look my way." I am grateful for that.
Hope all is well for you, friends. Thank you for stopping by.
