A Happy Place

Days are lengthening as the northern hemisphere is nearly midway in its tilt toward the sun. Sunnier days and warmer temperatures encourage this middle-aged gal, whose thoughts have turned to ... income taxes. Yes, this middle-aged gal is boring. And yes, it's tax season here in the US, so work has ramped up in the accounting office. I'm not normally a tax person, but everyone in the office does some kind of tax work from January through April. I could thank Congress for a tax code that is convoluted and changes from year to year for the extra work, but really wish that work were spread out a bit more evenly through the year!

The gardens are currently full of weeds. Granted, that's nothing new, although one of my friends visited last spring and weeded the front yard for me. Friends are, indeed, a good thing. The chard is still everywhere, and the artichoke plants are large and lush. A few fava bean plants have poked their way out of the ground, and a San Marzano tomato seedling is already in-ground. That's one of the favas, with the ubiquitous chard in the background. Hopefully, it will overshoot the chard soon.

We put out a little table under the wisteria and added a few potted plants (that little sago palm is the only survivor of about ten babies I propagated from the mother tree). This spot gets nice morning sun, making it a pleasant place to sit while injecting our coffee in the morning. We're also thinking about installing a flower box in that window to the left and moving the table farther to the right. In a few weeks when the wisteria blooms, it should be an even nicer spot to contemplate the world, although maybe not so great for meals with falling petals and buzzing bees.

There are a lot of day-off projects to do this year, but for now, it's nice to have this little spot for relaxing.

After a Long Break

I believe that this is the longest break from blogging I have ever taken. For the first time in several years, I've had nothing to share with the world. We're already a few weeks into it (and it's early for the lunar version), but happy new year!

When I last posted in December, I was painting. I painted the bedroom my housemate vacated, and while I was at it, the main bathroom. Both rooms were in dire need of love. I'm eying the kitchen now, although that really needs much more than just paint.

The room, painted and ready for an occupant 

My grandfather planted the Meyer lemons outside the window nearly 60 years ago

I have been hoping to find a new housemate through friends, but no one wants to live in the boring 'burbs! I'm contemplating craigslist, although I have bad luck with craigslist, so I'm putting that off for as long as possible.

Fresh paint in the bathroom, too.

Yes, that's doggie shampoo, it's too cold this time of year to bathe Piglet outside!

I'm still technically jobless, but I had a few interviews, which is an improvement over the big, fat nothing I was getting before. I picked up some part-time temporary admin work just to get by for the next few months, while giving me time to keep searching for something longer-term. I still dream of turning ideas into things that work, and for the right idea, I'd go just about anywhere.

In my spare time, I've become more active with the grassroots animal welfare group I've volunteered with since 2003. Instead of volunteering at the program level, I am now helping with their first-ever formal Development plan. Given my work experience, the fact that I have done some nonprofit development work, and the fact that it can be difficult to find volunteers for the less-fun background work (most volunteers want, understandably, to be hands-on with the animals) I think that is where my efforts will make the biggest difference.

Somewhere in the fray, I was asked to sit on the Board. I wasn't thrilled about taking on that responsibility, particularly since fundraising is already demanding, especially at the volunteer level. But I am not good at saying no, so I was voted on last week. I am already preparing my letter that states my intention to step down at the end of my term.

Confession: philanthropically speaking, education is my true passion. While I support animal welfare, environmental and social justice causes, I truly believe that education is the key, that an educated population is aware of its faults and has the tools to fix them. I hope one day to devote time to educational issues, but I haven't yet found where someone with my skill set can work most effectively in that arena. If anyone has ideas on that front, I'm all ears (or eyes, in this case).

Boxwood Blues

After bricking in more of the seating area, and plotting where I want my herbs to go, I noticed that the boxwood hedge around the holly needed pruning, and took out my trusty bypass clippers and started whacking at it.  Then I noticed that all the gunk that I'd just let drop down into the hedge through the years had settled into the nooks and crannies to rot.

Ooh, bonus compost! I grabbed a rake and began shaking the hedge to make it drop all the decomposed matter to the bottom, where I worked it into the surrounding soil around the pavers, which needs amending, so I can plant ground cover. With the detritus removed, all the dead limbs on the interior of the hedge stood out like sore thumbs.

Out came the hand pruners! And away went the dead limbs. A large pile of prunings began forming under the hedge.  I should have stopped there, but I noticed that a lot of branches were crossed and trying to grow around each-other and thought "well, that can't be good for them!"

So then I pruned off crossing branches, and grabbed the loppers for the larger limbs. The result up-close was a nice, airy space for new growth to come in. Except, of course, two problems:

1) I'd gotten the itch to prune in summer, rather than dormant season, so conditions aren't ideal for the hedge to recover from the shock. This summer has been relatively cool, so I'm hoping that won't be much of a problem.

2) When I took a step back to get the big picture, I realized I'd  pruned big, fat holes into the hedge. It's hideous! Where this last photo shows empty space, there used to be a carpet of leaves. Now it looks like the bad haircut mama gave you and sent you to school with, so the other kids could laugh mercilessly at you.

It took a few hours, plus 3 different types of cutting implements, a rake, and a shovel (to work the compost into the soil) to ruin a boxwood that my grandfather took years to shape and train. Defeated, I turned toward the house, looked up and noticed the cedar bonsai also had decomposing material stuck in its branches. I grabbed the rake and shook out as much as possible, and realized that it, too, was in dire need of pruning...

We Skipped Right Through Spring

Two weeks ago, at the end of May, the rain and cold made one last blast through the Bay Area. Usually by then, the fireplace has been long cleared of the winter's ashes, but at that point, I built one last fire. I definitely prefer being warm. I'm miserable in the cold.  I'm even wretchedly cold when I walk into an air conditioned room in the middle of summer! And speaking of that sunny season, last week, we went straight to it from winter.

My vegetable garden, slow to start due to the long cold snap (and I planted late because I hate grubbing in the garden when it's cold and wet, see previous paragraph), initially breathed a sigh of relief, then wilted a little with the sudden rush of heat! I planted beans on April Fool's day (photo above right), and am so glad I took photos, because the subsequent rains washed out all my handwritten tags (I thought Sharpies were waterproof!) that tell me which variety I planted where. Two months later, the poles are filled with vines (left).

I didn't plant as much as I have in the past, but I have been busy otherwise in the garden, hacking at weeds in the middle yard between the main house and the original house (which is now a giant storage shed), breaking up the hard clay, and laying bricks for a seating area and a little strip of soil (behind the grill) for plants next to the fence. I'm thinking herbs in front with Solanum Jasminoides climbing the fence behind. The seating area will be tested tomorrow (today? Sunday) afternoon, when I have my first guests since I returned home from France almost a year ago. It still needs a lot of work, but I'm making progress, little by little.

Ten Days

Ten days of sponge baths, washing a sink full of dishes with a liter and a half of water (it can be done, if you do it in the right order), and carting drinking water in my miniscule Mazda MX-5 from my father's house, which I admit, is better than having to walk with buckets of water from the town well.  I realize now just how much I have taken indoor plumbing for granted.

The plumber who said "no job is too small!" was supposed to drill a hole under the sidewalk for us so we could upgrade our water service to a larger diameter. He never showed up and never returned our calls.  I'm writing a bad review for him on Yelp!  I helped dig the trenches a little, but mostly I sat around whining pitifully while my housemate did everything.

Finally, yesterday afternoon, we held our breath as he turned the water back on, and ... no water spurted from anywhere it wasn't supposed to be spurting!  He went through the house opening all the taps, and everything worked fine.  After ten days of dreaming about being able to launder my clothes and take a luxurious, steamy shower, I was so relieved and happy that I took a two hour nap!

We are still waiting for the city's inspector to come out tomorrow and sign off, and there is a chance he will make us sink everything down deeper (we're short a few inches in spots), but the hard work is essentially done, and my housemate saved me a few thousand dollars by doing the entire job himself.  I don't know what I would have done without him.

Photo:  The labrador retriever in Piglet comes out when I turn on the hose. She loves to jump in the stream and stick her face in it!

Halcyon Days

I remember when I could sit in the shade of my orange tree, engrossed in a book, sipping iced coffee and crunching on almonds, while the dog patrolled the yard and one of the cats curled beneath my legs, secure in the knowledge that if I happened to spill on myself, as is often the case, I could rinse my clothes in the sink and hop in the shower, and the incident would quickly be just a memory.  My security was compromised in the wee hours last Sunday (see last week's post), when my water line burst.  No running water for me for awhile!

While awaiting the return of my housemate, I showered at my father's house and toted jugs of water from his place to mine.  My housemate finally arrived late Wednesday night and began digging Thursday in the hole I'd started, when he hit a huge mass of roots from the yew tree, which emitted a metal-sounding ping when he hit them.  Those puppies were wrapped around the service line connecting the house to the water company's feed, and they were holding on for dear life so tightly, they broke through.  A good two meters of the iron pipe were badly corroded.

He spent a day figuring out where everything runs.  The feed originally went under the foundation, where it was embedded in a concrete slab under the house and virtually untraceable.  Panic!  And then, he found the feed was diverted to another, easily accessible point, probably due to a previous failure in the line that fed my back house (which was never restored).  We will be replacing the entire line with copper pipe from the service point to the point where the line enters the house.

I helped dig the trench yesterday, a total of 8 meters in length, although we need to hire someone to drill out the last meter and a half under the sidewalk.  That will happen Monday.  In the meantime, the housemate will begin measuring, cutting and sweating pipe for the sections he can complete before then, and installing a pressure regulator.

I am still getting drinking water from dad, but the housemate  rigged up a temporary spigot in the garden for everything else.  At some point, I, the woman who, by choice, used to trudge into the middle of nowhere for days on end without a bath, whimpered about feeling like my house had become a third world country, because I had to bathe using a squeezable water bottle, which was very unsatisfying.  And because I lost one kg for not eating because washing dishes is now an ordeal.  I got no sympathy.  Heavy sigh.

Hopefully, everything will be finished sometime Tuesday, and I will be able to return to my post under the tree, spilling on myself with abandon, and this whole plumbing issue will be a faint memory ... until I receive the bills!

Surprise!

Sometime during the wee hours this morning, a sudden, muffled pop emitted from somewhere outside. My housemate's dog erupted into a barrage of barking and thunderous foot thumping, as she jumped off my bed where she'd been sound asleep a moment before, and raced through the house. I probably should have gotten up to investigate, but I figured if it were any type of animal intrusion (including human), she would have already scared it off. Anything else could wait until morning.
Sometime around 9:30, I rolled out of bed, shuffled through the house, picked up pet bowls, dumped them into the sink, and opened the tap to refill them. A thin line of clear liquid trickled out. I opened the tap more, but got nothing resembling more flow. The bowls filled painfully slowly. After I shut the tap, I heard the sound of water running through pipes somewhere. "Drip system must be on and sprung a leak."

I finished watering and feeding the housemate's and my fuzzy quadripeds, and shuffled out the front door to check the drip system. Two men walking by started waving and saying something in Spanish. I hadn't had coffee yet, so I could only look stupidly. My foot was suddenly cold and I realized they were trying to tell me my yard was flooded. Water was cascading down the planter box.
I turned off the drip system, but the river that was my planter continued to flow. I ran back into the house, tracking in mud, water, pine needles, filled both Brita (water filter) dispensers, threw on shorts and a shirt, grabbed the shutoff key to the water line, and ran back outside to shut down the water feed to my house.

The leak was somewhere behind a yew tree and next to a Meyer lemon bush next to the porch, the most difficult place to reach! The distance between the house (right) and yew (left) is about .75m. Out of the photo, about a meter beyond the lemon is another lemon. To get to the leak, I had to prune back the yew branches, then squeeze myself and my tools between the yew and lemons.

The water had been pooled between lemon and yew, so I began digging there, but when I turned the feed back on to retest, water was coming from the corner formed by the foundation and the porch. Even worse! My housemate is a welder, and is pretty sure he can fix it (he's in Sacramento with his girlfriend for the weekend), but I was seriously contemplating calling a plumber. Then I remembered I'd have to dump a few investments to pay a plumber and they charge extra for Sunday calls! I continued digging. I began a trench next to the porch (the red brick), but it was too narrow, and too cramped, and it could only be about a hand wide without interfering with the lemon's roots. The lemon had to go.

Seven hours later, I had:
1. Made it through the day on a double espresso, an iced coffee, an almond-rum croissant, some almonds and crackers with peanut butter, and a lot of water. I carefully avoided anything with too much fiber or lactose, so I wouldn't have to flush the toilet.
2. Dug up and re-potted the lemon. Sort of. I threw some soil around the roots, but not enough to cover them all, and I had no water for it. I'll probably lose it.
3. Tried to look in the crawlspace under the house to see if water had gotten there and if the pipe might be accessible from there, but the crawlspace entrance is on the opposite side of the house, and spider webs covered the portal. I decided to wait until my housemate gets home to do that.

4. Widened my trench, and dug about a meter down without seeing or feeling anything resembling a pipe.

I gave up for the day and headed to my father's house for a shower and to steal several containers of water from him. Well, I know what I'm doing tomorrow...