13-14 Sept: at home

Sunday, 13 September 2020

Alicia had made a brief visit last week and brought us some perishable groceries, and today Our Kathleen did the same, so between the two of them, we had bunches of bananas for the dehydrator. It has been in use lately for zucchini chips (so delicious that there would never be enough zucchini!), dried tomatoes, dried apples.

We found a treasure in amongst the groceries from Kathleen.

Reese’s!

Along with a surprise packet of Earl Grey tea, I enjoyed a restorative teatime before we added her ripe bananas to the Alicia bananas.

Skooter has been confined to his catios so that we can make sure he is not in the smoky air for great lengths of time.

Each day includes a brief excursion into the garden to water containers and greenhouse. Rain is expected for Monday.

The hydrangeas have recovered from heat wilt.

Evenings have included dinner salads of cucumber, tomato, scallions, greens and edible flowers; this weekend I started added squash flowers from some self seeded Halloween pumpkins from which it is too late to get pumpkins. The flowers are delectable raw in salad.

Monday, 14 September 2020

The rain did not come. With no wind, I decided it was safe enough to mow up the dry leaves that we had collected from Marlene’s lawn a week ago, before the fires, the smoke, the burn ban and power tool warning. I spread the leaves all over the lawn to be mowed and bagged.

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Some went into my one black leaf mold bin and some went on the Bogsy Wood edge as a chopped mulch.

Some went under the big plant table where I am planning a shade bed.

My Salix magnifica is suddenly showing great distress from last week’s heat. It had been well watered throughout.

I am distressed because I love it do. It’s kind of unusual and rare, I think.

A blueberry bush has also suddenly turned up its toes.

I would love to have got stuck in to weeding and tidying the center bed…

….but since the smoky air was still in the “very dangerous” zone, I thought I should go indoors.

I admired a few plants first.

black taro and golden canna

Kniphofia ‘Earliest of All’ and Solidago ‘Fireworks’

Boltonia asteroides

Passion flowers

Indoors, Allan was storing the dried bananas.

Still no rain.

Instead of reading my latest book (more on this soon), I tried to order Dan Hinkley’s and Jimi Blake’s new books online and endured an hour of password and security notice messages for no good reason. I was then promised free shipping and gave up when I was about to be charged $15 shipping anyway. Allan found the books for me. He is so much better at shopping. I don’t go into buildings anymore so everything possible is bought online. The online vendors are the ones getting rich from the pandemic.

Then my iPad and iPhone both decided it was time to delete all previous email messages, including 10000 or so unread emails (you read that number right), despite all my attempts in mail settings to stop them disappearing. As they ticked away into oblivion I felt both anxiety and relief. But if you have emailed me recently, it’s gone….(The mysterious deletion stopped when it reached 2019’s emails.)

Then I tried to log onto the ilwaco City Council zoom meeting and was thwarted by “invalid meeting ID number.” Two hours of potential reading time had disappeared. Fortunately, tomorrow is another chance because we are postponing work till we have better air to breathe.

I will now make a cucumber tomato etc salad and have time read my book for one hour before dinner.

Later, here are Allan’s photos from his delightful rainy midnight walk to the post office.

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