Tangly Cottage Gardening

15 Sept: one work day

Sep 23, 2021 by Tangly Cottage

Wednesday, 15 September 2021

Katie’s garden

We went to a small garden that we tidy up a couple of times a year. Three buckets of precious bunny poo awaited us, and there were kittens.

Despite feeling slightly unsteady, I was able to try out my new Root Slayer edger. Allan forgot to get the edging part in his photo, so he added it in later; the tool is longer.

It worked a treat. I had my rollator close by in case I had a bad turn. What haunts me is the four times, a month ago, when I fell, then felt twice like I would fall but grabbed something, then almost fell, all with that horrible spinning lack of control. It hasn’t been that bad for three weeks now, but I’m still scared and still dizzy and don’t know how to build confidence or even have confidence that it won’t happen again.

It does help, mentally, to accomplish some befores and afters, even if Allan did 3/4 of the work.

He tidied up the porch planters from the inside and I reached through the porch railing from below and tidied up from the outside. We both admired the abutilon flowers.

The Red Barn

Because a whole bunch of rain and wind is predicted for Friday, we skipped Diane’s garden…no point in tidying for a stormy weekend…and just watered the planters at the Red Barn Arena. Holly was at the barn and got her biscuit.

The little garden was looking good but didn’t get a photo.

Patti’s garden

Patti wanted us to remove a handmade mostly plastic fountain from the back yard. There were way more river rocks in it than we had expected. We got to take them home. I was able to pull rocks from my rollator and then got down to ground level to pull some more. I need to develop the ability to do crawling around gardening.

We used a red chair to mark the spot till something is done about filing it in.

Patti felt the sweet peas were blocking the view of the garden from her porch, and she was right, so I thinned them. I couldn’t bear to pull them but will do so when they get sodden from the storm. It was silly to not just pull them today, though.

Sweet peas and Cosmos ‘Cupcake’, grown from seed.

I was able to deadhead in the garden, partly even daring to work standing up.

Patti went to the hardware store, saying “If you kids are good, I’ll bring you a treat,” and returned with a bag of delicious popcorn.

The Depot Restaurant

Allan deadheaded the Agyranthemum ‘Butterfly’…

…and clipped some grasses that had fallen down by the walk into the kitchen.

Susie’s garden

We just stopped by to pick up some groceries Bill had gotten for us at Costco. As soon as the wall is capped, we will be adding more mulch and more plants. The wall builder is also a fisherman by trade, and his fishing trip is taking longer than expected.

I am well chuffed at the cosmos I grew from seed and penstemons from cuttings.

That’s it for work this week. We are counting on a big rain so not watering at the port and not tidying either, because we doubt there will be many pedestrians this weekend.

At home, we found a beautiful hanging basket waiting for us, a gift from our client, Mary. It really pops in color in the corner that usually has a basket but has lacked one this summer.

I was so exhausted after the little bit of work I did today that I was in bed asleep at 11:30, unheard of till now, and slept for nine hours.

Posted in journal | 4 Comments »

Seal Slough: East meets West

Sep 22, 2021 by Tangly Cottage

Allan’s latest adventure

Southwest Washington Paddle Trips

14 September 2021

Seal Slough is a side trip from the Grays River near Rosburg Washington. The first time I paddled this area, I was focused on following the Grays River up from the adjacent Deep River to the iconic Grays River Covered Bridge as I posted here. I made it to Duffy’s Irish Pub but have not had the opportunity to visit Seal Slough until today.

Here is the route from Washington’s most south and west of ports, Ilwaco, to Rosburg’s Community Hall. The second picture is a closer look at Seal Slough’s path north of Grays River.

The quiet Rosburg Community Hall had plenty of parking today.

The launch is adjacent to the Altoona Pillar Rock Road bridge. Driving from here it is ten more miles to visit the ghost town of Altoona and see Pillar Rock. In 1910 Altoona had the fourth largest cannery on the…

View original post 528 more words

Posted in journal | Leave a Comment »

13-14 Sept: Epley and two books

Sep 21, 2021 by Tangly Cottage

Monday, 13 September 2021

I was thrilled to get a call in the morning that, due to a cancellation, I could have an evaluation by the physical therapist today. The PT I saw, Libby, asked lots of questions, listened to my whole dizziness chronicle, and then performed the Epley Maneuver. She looked as surprised (as you can tell when someone is masked) to hear that my doctor does not believe it works. I wanted to give it a try. It definitely started some spinning feelings, but as she watched my eyes closely, she said there was no nystagmus, or eye jerking, which is a way to diagnose vertigo. I said I wished I could have gotten referred by my doctor earlier because nystagmus was observed in the emergency room and by the nurse I saw for an ear infection a week before this PT appointment.

So the dizziness remains a mystery. I will have follow up appointments for some balance exercises, not until November because of Covid overload delaying our medical system, unless I get in on another cancellation.

I was told to take it easy and not bend over for the next day after the maneuver, so despite nice weather and feeling remarkably balanced for a change, I just read.

Meanwhile, Allan picked some apples…

….and tidied up the J’s garden….

Cupcake and Saucers cosmos at the J Crew Cottage

…and a painted some trim over the garage. The faded yellow paint is left over from the original colors of our manufactured home, an ugly pale brown and yellow.

His first idea was to use cobalt blue….

…but he did not like it, so he went with the dark green which was supposed to be the house color (but it got mixed to a lighter and brighter shade over ten years ago).

With the slightly tilted garage roof, the green is perfect as it lets the arbor stand in for trim.

The book I read was…

…on a subject close to my life. Part memoir and part analysis, its an excellent read and might even convince someone to change their attitude. Here it refers to another book I like:

Later:

Great book. Unfortunately, the people I’d most like to read it probably won’t: the friends whose conversation always swings back around to how much weight they want to lose or how much they fear gaining an ounce.

Tuesday, 14 September 2021

Allan went boating at my insistence. I planned a reading day so as not to get in some sort of pickle outside alone. As it happened, I had a disturbingly dizzy day to where I couldn’t even unload the dishwasher and could barely get a snack, so reading was the best choice. I had a new library book recommended on the Cultivating Place podcast. It is my favorite book of the year; I encourage you to get it. Here are some samples that I loved so much, I felt like my head was floating around the room.

……………..

………….

……..

……

And…

And….

Smallness, fading away quietly, is just the way I see my own life. I have never seen put it into such eloquent words why that appeals so much to me. (I have had some dreams of glory and recognition for my work, I must admit, but other than this blog and compliments from passersby, they never came true.)

Now I have a new favorite writer and am burning to get his next book, which appears to be more specifically about his life as a gardener, expecially one particular job. I am number five on the library wait list and can hardly bear the waiting.

Posted in journal | 11 Comments »

12 Sept: more rollator gardening

Sep 20, 2021 by Tangly Cottage

Sunday, 12 September 2021

At home

I did some more gardening with the rollator and tried out a new technique. My shadow fell on the area that was my first goal….

…a patch of Geranium ‘Rozanne’ by the water canoe.

I had decided I would try kneeling and crawling around, which is the way Allan often works. I prefer standing and bending, but with a new fear of falling I might feel safer closer to the ground, and get a new perspective on the garden.

I found that didn’t like it much at all down at ground level, using a whole new set of muscles that don’t get used standing up. It wasn’t long before I hauled myself back up to the rollator, with difficulty and Allan’s help to hold it still instead of it rolling away from me. It wasn’t until the next day that we found out how to use the handbrakes. I did accomplish some but not all of the Rozanne clean up. I’m still hesitant to get far from the rollator.

I did NOT want to get down and crawl to get the weed grass out in this area…

I went back to sitting and sometimes standing, usually with one hand on the rollator for stability, as I clipped plants on either side of Rose Loop West.

Salvia ‘Amistad’ and Solidago ‘Fireworks’

Skooter helped, including helping me get a photo of a box container.

Rosa rubrifolia, Rosa moyesii ’Geranium’, Sedum ’Autumn Joy’

I made it as far back as the fire circle, where I found that my garden is going back to the wild…critters.

I saw two youngsters. One skittered away. Skooter was smart enough to watch but not engage.

Allan tried to chase the young raccoon away. Up the willow tree it went.

He went to turn the hose on, but by the time he returned, the critter had left for the crab pot yard. I continued to admire the fire circle garden for a few more minutes.

Just doing a couple of hours of gardening had me tired. Feeling mildly dizzy wears the brain out as it tries to adjust.

Skooter surveys his domain as I have to go indoors.

Posted in journal | 9 Comments »

11 Sept: sifting

Sep 19, 2021 by Tangly Cottage

Saturday, 11 September 2021

At home

After a horrible Friday during which I ended up in the emergency room (see end of post), on Saturday I felt up to trying to do some seated gardening. The front driveway garden still has sad looking Geranium ‘Rozanne’. I couldn’t figure out a way to clean it up because I didn’t feel safe standing and bending, and, since I rarely kneel to garden, didn’t want to make a spectacle of myself in the front garden by trying to crawl around in an unfamiliar way.

I told myself I’d leave the flowers for the bees which seemed to be enjoying them.

On the corner of Alicia’s parking pavement, we harvested another disappointingly unproductive potato pot.

I felt off kilter but was determined to sit by the leaf bin on my rollator and sift some of last autumn’s leaves into the wheelbarrow.

I put the leaf mold into big pots which Allan then dumped into an empty galvanized can by the greenhouse.

Meanwhile, Allan filled the canoe pond with rain barrel water via a hose.

….and dumped some potato pot soil into the garden boat. I don’t think that heavily peaty raised bed mix was the right soil for growing potatoes in a pot.

Sifting the leaf mold had felt like a workout after having done almost nothing physical since August 15. Afterward, I managed to harvest some veg. The rollator has a handy box under the seat.

We left behind a marrow that was unappealingly large.

On the garden side of the fish totes in which I grow veg:

I despaired at seeing a couple of pots by the greenhouse that has not been getting enough water. I need to get back to the watering myself rather than delegate but am still too dizzy to wrangle hoses.

Next to the wilted pineapple sage, a fascicularia turning red cheered me up.

Why is my green leaved banana always so sad looking? A quest for answers tells me too much ….or too little water.

I was able to get partway down Rose Loop by the center bed, where both Allan and I took some photos.

Allan took some photos of the Fremontodendron californium, which has been blooming non stop since May.

My energy was completely spent. One’s brain gets tired when being sent dizziness messages all day long. I’ve been going to bed two hours earlier than usual most nights. Today marks a month since the day dizziness felled me to the ground. I must remind myself that I am doing better. Two weeks ago, I could barely leave the house and couldn’t even wash my own hair at the sink. Today, I sifted three red wheelbarrows of leaf mold. That is progress.

What happened Friday: Apparently, I had a bad reaction to amoxicillin, and my entire mouth became a cave of pain with a multitude of canker sores all at once. It felt excruciatingly painful to eat (the only thing I could manage was ice cream…even yogurt burned) , to talk, to brush teeth, to drink water, to breathe even. Our clinic has no walk in appointments and the chaotic “Rod Run” car show had taken over the peninsula, making for potential gridlock if we went to urgent care across the river, so I ended up in the emergency room again. I was given a prescription of a goopy sweet “magic mouthwash” of Benadryl and lidocaine and told to stop taking the antibiotic . How ironic…Benadryl, when I’d finally kicked the habit of using it to sleep. I called the pharmacist the next day and was assured I did not have to swallow it as the instructions said, but could just swish it, thus saving myself from re-forming my Benadryl habit. The mouthwash worked, slowly, so that after two days I could talk again without avoiding all consonants and by Wednesday, I could eat again with no pain. It felt at the time like a worse ordeal than the dizziness. At least it resolved more quickly.

Posted in journal | 26 Comments »

9 Sept: the last port watering (I hope)

Sep 18, 2021 by Tangly Cottage

Thursday, 9 September 2021

I started the day with optimism because yesterday I’d gotten a call that, due to a cancellation, I had a Physical Therapy evaluation today and two PT work sessions, one Saturday, one next Tuesday. JOY! Today, I’d been up for less than half an hour when I got a call that today’s appointment was canceled due to the PT being ill, which would make Saturday the evaluation and Tuesday a work session. Ideally, I was told, they like three work sessions after the evaluation but due to the Covid situation, my second and third work sessions would not be till November unless there is another cancellation.

An hour later, I got an apologetic call from the kind and lovely scheduler to say that Saturday’s was cancelled, too, and maybe next Tuesday as well. This is so typical in our Covid times that I was not even surprised, just dismayed…but philosophical. Now all my PT appointments are scheduled for November.

Out my east window, I was excited to see that my Heptacodium (seven sons tree) which I have because both Debbie Teashon and Pam Fleming recommended it (Debbie brought me one on a visit) is blooming for the first time. Allan took a photo.

Port of Ilwaco

In the late afternoon, Allan watered from Time Enough Books to the Marie Powell Gallery.

Time Enough Books with my good friend Jack leaving Purly Shell

Scout, who has been having health problems, leaving Time Enough Books.

Allan dug the Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’ out of the garden boat.

Port office, south side:

In good news, a few days after this I got the port budget situation clarified. It is ok if we go over the original amount as long as we let them know, and the budget does NOT have to include the community building. That is one less thing to feel stress about. I’m so glad.

Ilwaco Fire Station

Allan watered our volunteer garden.

I want to reach into this photo and cut back those lambs ears. Still, not bad on the southwest corner.

One of two brunneras on north side is not snail bitten but they both now have fresh Sluggo.

I swear someone around here likes florist gladiolas ( I do not) and keeps sticking them in our gardens. They used to appear in the downtown planters and the post office, where they don’t fit in with the look of the other plants we use. If you are reading this, I am sorry to sound ungrateful, but I am sure there is someone else who would love them. They require too much deadheading of spent blossoms and then look gawky and unattractive, especially in the front row of a garden…in my opinion.

Ilwaco Post Office garden

Allan watered. It’s the Golden time there with Helianthus ‘Lemon Queen’.

He was trying to recharge the soil with water, hard to do with hose watering. If it rains, it will absorb better into damp soil. (It did rain, but only 0.02 inches.)

At home

I’d been worrying for a few days about certain plants out in the Bogsy Wood but hadn’t asked Allan to check them because he was doing all the work. Even though Allan did not get home till dusk, he did go out to water them in the almost dark and indeed, two of the three I had worried about were very sad.

This white hydrangea was very sad. Maybe by next year, its roots will reach the water table.

As I feared, this patch of pink turtlehead is also so sad.

The Norwoods, two doors down, had given us some crab today that Jeff and fishing dog Finn had caught and cooked. It made a delicious addition to dinner.

Posted in journal | 14 Comments »

8 Sept: 15 minutes of gardening

Sep 17, 2021 by Tangly Cottage

Wednesday, 8 September 2021

Before work

My saffron crocus bulbs had arrived from Renee’s Garden. Before work, I watched Allan plant them for me. My part was to hand him the bulbs, a handful at a time, and say where I wanted them.

Despite being watered, the Geranium ‘Rozanne’ in the driveway garden looks parched. I envisioned trimming it to the base and getting new growth. But bees are still all over the flowers. My Davidia ‘Sonoma’ still looks distressed, as it has ever since the day of the heat dome.

Skooter helped plant crocus sativa in the cat memorial garden.

We checked the boatyard on the way out of town to see if it needed watering. The soil was delightfully slightly damp.

A scrim of horsetail had sprung up all along the sidewalk edge. I didn’t feel up to weeding next to hard surfaces.

Patti’s garden

I waited in the van while Allan did some weeding and string trimming of a patch of grass by the street. These were my views:

The house next door has a big side yard that used to belong to Patti’s house. I wish I could take it on as a job. It has paths and bridges in there that, with some weeding and pruning, could be revealed again.

We used to work on this area when it was Patti’s.

Then, with my rollator, I was able to walk and then sit to deadhead the cosmos, collect some poppy seeds, and deadhead the sweet peas around the corner of the fence….

…while Allan did some more string trimming of an unmowable area….

(When this was installed, I wondered how it was going to get mowed.)

….and pulled some old veg plants out of some containers and gave biscuits to Stella and a visitor (Patti’s daughter’s dog).

The Depot Restaurant

I had hoped to do a little deadheading here, as well, but as we were parking, I had that weird whoosh of dizziness down my right side and (a new thing) across my chest. I think it was a combo of dizziness and anxiety. Maybe I need to just push through it. I chose to just sit and watch Allan deadhead the Agyranthemum ‘Butterfly’ and trim the escallonia and the Lonicera ‘Baggeson’s Gold’.

Becky, who runs a hearing aid center in Ocean Park, stopped by. She wondered why I was sitting instead of working and was interested in talking about vertigo and how it may be related to the ear. Meanwhile, Allan had checked the dining deck to make sure hops growing on the north side lattice had not gone wild.

Garden north of deck, with hops on the lattice

Mike’s garden

First we drove by Mike’s so I could assess what needed doing. Then I went home while Allan went back there. He cut down the two echinops (blue globe thistle) to fresh new growth.

The noisy little dogs got small pieces of biscuit.

J Crew Cottage

Allan watered the five plants that the sprinklers don’t reach (three roses and two hydrangeas), trimmed roses, and mowed.

Front garden:

Last week, knowing I was ill, Jodie herself had picked all the plums off the tree. All of them had been getting a grey brown mold, sadly. It was not the sort of harvest we had expected.

Ilwaco Community Building

On driving by earlier, I had seen how distressed the rhododendrons were along the sidewalk, so Allan watered.

We haven’t had time to keep the mugo pine trimmed. It’s not smart to plant a plant that wants to grow tall in front of a sign. I wonder if he trimmed off that one stem that is covering a number.

Heather by the ramp up to the parking lot.

Tomorrow, he will have just a bit of watering at the port and our volunteer gardens. I do hope it rains soon and ends wateriThere is just a trace of rain in the forecast.

Posted in journal | 2 Comments »

7 September: an extra and regular jobs

Sep 16, 2021 by Tangly Cottage

Tuesday, 7 September 2021

Allan went to work while I stayed home. I miss working very very much but not as much as I miss my own garden.

Yett House

Although Susie doesn’t own the Boreas anymore, she continues to manage a vacation rental called the Yett House and had asked Allan to do some string trimming and weeding. He said to me that he found it ironic to be strimming a garden with another person’s advertising sign up, who should have done a better job.

The Red Barn

Cosmo enjoyed some cat snacks but got no petting because I was not there.

It is the Golden time in this garden, too, with Helianthus ‘Lemon Queen’ and Solidago ‘Fireworks’.

At the other barn door, Allan found the oft neglected pineapple sage planter had gotten some watering since we were last there.

Cosmo came through the barn, hoping for more treats.

I’ve been told he likes to get horse rides in the arena.

Allan hoped to water Diane’s next but he saw the mowing guy was there.

He didn’t have time to maneuver around another worker because he had to get home to take me to the clinic. After my appointment, he returned to Diane’s, which made his workday take an extra half an hour.

Diane’s garden

Only the pots needed watering, because she will be home the next day.

After viewing Allan’s last set of photos of Diane’s, I had asked him to cut back the patch of fireweed along the road so it won’t go to seed throughout the garden and had said my intention had been to dig it out now, if I’d been able to. He did better than cutting it by pulling some out.

I will never be able to trust myself to work so close to traffic again so the outside of Diane’s fence will be Allan’s purvey, even when I can return to work.

Someone commented to Allan while he was at Diane’s (perhaps the admirer stopped in her car) that she just moved here and takes inspiration from the roadside garden. Which reminds me that someone said a similar thing to him last time he watered the post office.

He deadheaded the septic vault garden.

At home

He had to water at home in the dusk because I couldn’t, too dizzy.

Our entire pear harvest except for the one I ate yesterday

I had gotten an urgent care appointment with nurse Brianna at the clinic, because my ear slightly more sore each day. I like Brianna very much. She takes great care, and, because I was the last appointment, she was not under time pressure. I do indeed have an ear infection so perhaps there is a connection to my dizziness. I’d like to think so. It would be great if the antibiotic she prescribed were a cure.

I had that very morning taken matters into my own hands and secured myself an appointment in a month with an ear (nose and throat) doctor in Longview, the same one I saw two and a half years ago with the mellifluous name of Dr. Priyanka O’Brien. Brianna said she would also put in a referral, making it quite official. She also referred me to the Physical Therapy clinic because I am a high fall risk. She said it might take awhile because of the Covid situation. I’ve been trying to speed up the referral to the neurologist but the hospital is backed up due to the Covid crises. Last week, our county had two more deaths and 85 new cases. Our vaccination rate is at only about 53 percent.

Posted in journal | 7 Comments »

6 Sept: in the catio with a book

Sep 15, 2021 by Tangly Cottage

Monday, 6 September 2021

at home

After a disturbingly dizzy morning, my brain seemed to settle down a bit and, with Allan’s help, I made it it out to the couch in the south catio to read for an hour. I have been reading two memoirs by Isabel Gillies; I like her honesty about her flaws.)

This ground level spot in the catio is where I would like to have a floor level porch going out where my south window is, incorporated into the catio, a dream complicated by having to find someone to build it who is well qualified to replace a window with a door in a spot that gets beaten with winter storms.

This would be my view, sort of, maybe from higher, if I had a reading chair on a porch.

I could spend my small inheritance on this if I become permanently decrepit. I am not sure if that would be wise.

Allan pointed out that the huge mirror that Tony Hofer gave us would have to be moved if a porch were built. It weighs “a hundred pounds”. He moved it into place by himself two years ago and doesn’t want to do it again. I said crabbily that if we hired someone to do a door and porch, we could darn well hire them to move the mirror out and then to the west side of the porch.

Here are some of my views from the chaise longue.

The cats love to play with grasses in the catio.

I see now why this barrel has few plants and is disintegrating.

I have five pears on my pear tree. Allan picked the first one

Skooter very much wanted in and then he very much wanted out.

I figure I have at least six weeks of intermittent good weather left. We have two lovely solid chaise longues that Susie gave us when she retired from the Boreas Inn, one lodged in the catio and the other needing a permanent spot because it is too heavy for me to move. I’d like to find a lightwieght folding one like my parents used to take camping, so I could move it around the garden and try to relate to each part of the garden in a new, more passive or receptive or meditative way.

At the end of my outdoor time, I managed to rollator over to the veg boxes, where I sat and picked some beans, a courgette turned into marrow, and a sad specimen of a carrot with no goodness in it.

Maybe too much nitrogen or improper watering for that useless carrot

two books I read this week

These were both recommendend on this episode of A Way to Garden podcast, which is also where i first heard of author Isabel Gillies.

The author, just about my age, was adventurous and traveled the world in her youth. I tend to feel inferior to folks like that. She settled down for about a year and wrote about small town life while reminiscing about her travels. I had a hard time at first with the handwriting font but then got used to it as the beautiful paintings by the author drew me in. She made me laugh sometimes, like when she listed the needs for a cozy nestling nook for bad weather, including “a remote control for the radio so you can turn it off when NPR starts playing jazz”. And this…

And I so agree with this from the small town paper:

It is a beautiful book and I recommend it.

Another book recommended in the podcast is Keep Moving by poet Maggie Smith. The title is a bit ironic for me when I am having trouble moving. It has short essays about moving on from her divorce, all interesting, interspersed with lots of her helpful sayings that she posted on Twitter, each ending with the words Keep Moving. Even though I would have liked a more extensive memoir, and even though it doesn’t touch on physical disability, some of the sayings were useful and inspirational for me. My favorites:

Stop straining to hold the door open as if your old life is there, waiting, and you could slip right in.

She suggests writing “breathe, eat, and blink” on your to do list and then crossing them off. ”Give yourself credit for living.”

“Fight the urge to withdraw when you’re in pain—to make yourself small, to secret yourself away, as if to avoid inflicting yourself on others….. It will be your turn [to help] soon enough.”

I had a close friend reject me when I was in need, no doubt annoyingly so. The small town experience had repercussions that inspired me to be more of a recluse. So…

“Revise the story you tell yourself about rejection. All that tells you is what you were worth to someone else, not what you are worth.”

And….”Accept that you do not get to choose who loves you, who keeps their promises, who forgives. But you can choose to love, to keep your promises, to forgive. Choose well.”

“Do not wait for someone else to rescue you. Do one thing today, however small, in Operation Save Yourself.” I took this to mean continuing to be proactive about my medical care.

The non-memoir pages look like this.

My reaction to that one is that if future me has dementia, she won’t even know who I am, much less what I hand to her.

This is so me:

And so is this.

The book I am reading now is Cozy, by Isabel Gillies, also recommended on the podcast. Her life is a lot cushier than most people’s but she is well aware of that. A lot of the ways she makes herself cozy require money for small luxuries and are out of reach for many. And yet I remain charmed by her. Some takeaways:

“For me, the words ‘apparently, it’s going to rain all day’ convert in my brain to an Emma Thompson-like voice saying, Don’t worry, everything is going to be ok. Even though all the research that I can find says that, scientifically, light and sun make you feel better, the opposite is true for me. I chose to move from California back to New York in the 1990s because of the lack of rainy days; it was never even overcast.”

This reminds me of a friend who moved from California to my home town, Seattle, because he wanted to live in a place “like a film noir”. I moved to the beach to get to a place greyer than Seattle and am disappointed that the summers have gotten warmer and sunnier.

“Everyone cares about something different, so in a way, most things on earth are being paid attention to by somebody. That is hopeful.”

Posted in journal | 10 Comments »

Sept 5-6: The Golden Time

Sep 14, 2021 by Tangly Cottage

5 and 6 September 2021, at home

As dizziness kept me indoors feeling stuck and claustrophobic, I asked Allan to photograph whatever he saw in the garden that was gold, orange, or yellow.

Here is what he saw.