Tuesday, 10 November 2020
It is nice to have a cat who likes to have a bit of cereal milk at breakfast, like Smoky used to do.
The weather report I rely on most for advance planning is a local one called 642weather.com, 642 being the Long Beach area code. For hour to hour weather, I pay close attention to the Dark Sky app. Today, 642 had changed since yesterday’s forecast to show some light rain instead of heavier rain all day. Dark Sky warned of some light rain in the afternoon. We decided to go to work anyway (even though I would have loved a real rainy reading day).
The Depot Restaurant
As I have said many times, I do not believe in the kind of garden clean up that I do for most clients, especially public gardens. I suppose the Depot is one place where the owners, Nancy and Michael, wouldn’t mind if I put up an interpretive sign explaining that gardens left standing are good for bugs and critters. But…it’s easier to just get the job done in one swoop.
We both worked on clipping the hops that climb the dining deck lattice, Allan doing the hardest part because he was inside on the deck to remove vines from the top of the lattice walkway, while I was just clipping to halfway up on the outside of the lattice. Halfway through that job, torrential rain began. I wondered if we would have to just get the hops done and return tomorrow for the rest. I’d already cut some tall perennials down so it would look sort of half-arsed if we left it.
As the rain slowed slightly, I decided to keep cutting the perennials down, using The Toy (our Stihl battery shearing tool) and hand clippers (secateurs). I still thought we would have to return to weed.
The rain had come on so suddenly that there had been no time to get to the van and my raincoat without getting even wetter while trying to get into it.
With the hops done, Allan joined me by trimming a fern and some dierama (angel’s fishing rod).
The sun came out so I kept on with the weeding, mostly prunella and some creeping buttercups and a smattering of bindweed. Allan weeded along the parking lot side of the logs and loaded up debris.
Sous chef Jamie came out to chat with us after putting on some meat to roast.
The smell of the food had been amazing and maddening while we worked. I so very much miss dining at the Depot, our favourite restaurant, and if it comes true that we can get a Covid vaccine in the springtime, our very first treat will be a Depot dinner. We might treat ourselves to a take out dinner this autumn to celebrate the start of staycation. We have not had takeout food because my Covid protocols are fierce, but I know that the utmost food prep precautions are taken here (and also at our favourite lunch spot, Captain Bob’s Chowder).
At home
We had a large amount of debris to process. Some bamboo needed trimming, and the trimmed bamboo bits and all the hops needed to be stuffed into bags in our wheelie bin. Covid protocols require that all garbage, even yard waste, must be bagged. (There is no recycling or yard waste pick up where we live.) Hops vines won’t break down well in the compost.
Allan dealt with the hops and bamboo whilst I chopped and loaded both the Depot debris and yesterday’s debris from Mike’s garden into bin two, which had been halfway full. Chopping it up makes it compost faster.
We got done in a brisk wind an hour before dark. Even with dry clothes, it took a long time to get warm afterwards.
I have some anxiety about a storm that might or might not arrive Friday night. The potential is being compared to The Monster of 2007 …an experience I do not want to repeat, especially in a double wide manufactured home; at least I know our metal box of a house came through the 2007 storm ok.
Our local paper has this to say:
“It’s been almost 13 years since the Great Gale of 2007 ravaged the coastal Pacific Northwest with strong winds, punishing rainfall, and left some residents in the dark for days. Uncertainty remains, but the region is currently in the bullseye for a similarly strong wind storm later this week.
The approaching weather system is associated with severe tropical storm Atsani that hammered part of the northern Philippines on Nov. 6.
Current forecast models have the storm arriving late in the evening on Nov. 13, bringing strong winds, large coastal waves and heavy rainfall. It is expected to have a low pressure between 968 and 973 millibars, nearing the 952 millibars reading from 2007.”
The article goes on to say that we could have 70 mph wind and, with Wednesday being a holiday, it would be a good day to prepare. It will not be a holiday for us, but we are more prepared than ever before. We now have not only a good little camp stove but a generator so that we won’t lose our frozen pandemic food stores! Apparently we are not sure if it will run both a space heater and the freezer and refrigerator. I hope we do not have to find out. The path of the storm could change or it may fizzle, as most storms here since 2007 have. The joys of anticipating some exciting storm watching ended for me after the 2007 experience.
Worrying about a storm can occupy the part of my mind that is not worrying about a trumpian coup. By the time this post goes to press, the national news will have changed. Today, I’ve been reading some dire thoughts by Heather Cox Richardson and Dan Rather.
In cat news, I think adding the kittens has had the effect on Skooter that I’d hoped for. He no longer sits and yowls pitifully for hours. I interpreted his yowls as complaints about being the only cat. Even though he growls and hisses at the kittens, he also occasionally has a brief moment of play with them.
The work board tonight; some jobs now get shifted into a final clean up column for one more check up in December….or after a big storm. [Edited to add a spoiler: the storm split into two and so was weaker than in 2007.]
