Tag Archives: PhotoOps

Early Spring Garden

Finally a bit of rain after some gloriously sunny and warm spring days.
Russel is doing a burn today, and hopefully this weekend..slash from tree cuttings that just seems to pile up so fast.

He is getting the fencing in place on the new flat, don’t think we will be able to get a greenhouse going this year though we will plan for next. I have some lettuce and salad greens in the garden, the beds are amended, the raised beds ready to plant. The mounded beds still need to be shaped.

I hope to plant most everything else out as soon as I get home. (another Michigan trip)
I will need Russel to look for specific veggie starts in early May.

Spring

Today is one of those beautiful spring days. I walked to the meadow down the road from our place. I started doing that just to get the feeling of being in nature. Even though we are surrounded by forest and no houses, when I am out side here all I see is the work that needs to be done.

What a shame, I need to change that mind set some how. We are so lucky in so many ways.

Dad was doing good the 3 months since we were there, then last week he collapsed. Now he has brain lesions.. and is getting radiated again for them. He has been through so much this past 2 years. I feel his time is very short, and it brings up so much stuff for me.

We missed some very cold days when we left mid- December.
Once back it has mostly been nice for a month or so. Finally getting some needed rain in March.

Along with it being spring one day and winter the next.
Of course just thinking spring brings up the ton of work it takes to get ready to garden.

Christmas in Michigan

Well it snowed a lot. It was below freezing many days we were there. Ice storms and snow.

Sue had us doing a puzzle for her.

Anything to keep us distracted from what was really happening with Dad. Although he was doing pretty good considering all he had been though.

It was a good trip but glad to get home.

Brother John and his girls, Laurie and Kelly did make it down for a visit.

Randy Foster – RIP

Randy Foster caught his last wave Tuesday November 25 at Shelter Cove.

Gone from mystery into mystery
Gone from daylight into night
Another step deeper into darkness
Closer to the light

~ Bruce Cockburn, Closer To The Light

Wave on wave of life
Like the great wide ocean’s roll
Haunting hands of memory
Pluck silver strands of soul
The damage and the dying done
The clarity of light
Gentle bows and glasses raised
To the charity of night

~ Bruce Cockburn, The Charity of Night

His bright light of being will be missed.
Randy and Sarah with their Aikido family at Benbow in 2004.

Randy Foster with Mateel Aikido family -2004

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I love the pounding of hooves
I love engines that roar
I love the wild music of waves on the shore
And the spiral perfection of a hawk when it soars
Love my sweet woman down to the core

There’s roads and there’s roads
And they call, can’t you hear it?
Roads of the earth
And roads of the spirit
The best roads of all
Are the ones that aren’t certain
One of those is where you’ll find me
Till they drop the big curtain

Hear the wind moan
In the bright diamond sky
These mountains are waiting
Brown-green and dry
I’m too old for the term
But I’ll use it anyway
I’ll be a child of the wind
Till the end of my days

Little round planet
In a big universe
Sometimes it looks blessed
Sometimes it looks cursed
Depends on what you look at obviously
But even more it depends on the way that you see

Hear the wind moan
In the bright diamond sky
These mountains are waiting
Brown-green and dry
I’m too old for the term
But I’ll use it anyway
I’ll be a child of the wind
Till the end of my days

~ Bruce Cockburn, Child of the Wind

Mountain Lion

Last night (23 September) I glanced out the window,
and what did I see???

First time to see a mountain lion here. We had been gone all day and Kaya had been out side. This lion seemed fairly young and Russel was sure it was a female. She was at the outside edge of the garden and about 10 feet from the bedroom window which is where I blindly stuck the camera up to get a shot.
I wish I had spent the brief amount of time she was here looking at her, instead of documenting it.

Very good looking cat. 🙂
She had a very long tail.

Home at last

We had a few glitches and Kaya had to live out side in the heat and smoke while we were gone, but we came home to a good garden:

Harvesting: 4 kinds of summer squash, basil for tons of pesto, eggplants, tomatos, red and yellow potatoes, lots of salad greens.
Peppers on – waiting for them to go red.
Carrots, beets and green beans a bit slow, planted late.
Peaches so heavy breaking the tree limbs, but I have my doubts as to whether they will ripen.

We also made it to Reggae on the River at Benbow, a one day event this year and quite comfortable, good food, good music and a great crowd.

A couple of visits to Eureka,saw “Iron Man” and “Hancock” on 2 separate visits. Got sushi and bought some stuff for the house, including a door for an interior room.

It has been hot and smoky this past week, but we had good cool weather and little smoke for several weeks.

We also got the storage shed cleaned out and BIG NEWS Russel got the electrical water pump to work with our little honda generator… this means that I can pump water from here… no having to go down down below to the holding tanks with gasoline to run the pump. (he always does that job)
So this is a good thing, it has been in the process for a couple of years, lots of lines and wires to run between here and there and lots of little issues… but it’s working!!!

I haven’t been swimming all year. Most days I wanted to go up to the Van Duzen River, it was too smokey. And the Eel is so low and full of algae I wouldn’t put my toe in it.

And that’s about it for now. I will leave you with Bucky-boo…
who is sporting a much larger rack now than when this was taken a few weeks ago!!

Michigan July 2008

You can pretty much read this post and get what Michigan was.

I am always glad to see family and especially fun to see Dad and Sue.
This year got to meet great-niece Lauren who is just a delightful engaging young woman. I hope we can get to know each other through emails.

I did get to see niece, Laurie (17) and she is a beautiful as ever. I am so glad brother John brought her down from Alpena to visit while I was there.

Also had dinner and a visit with Lauren’s grandparents, Scott and Donna. Now how this works is my sister (who died at 31 in 1985) had a son with Scott, this is Jamey, and Lauren is his daughter. Scott and I were in school together, he is the only person from my graduation class of 1970 that I still have contact with. It was really good to visit with them awhile. Time is always too short.

My old friend Darlene also came to visit. I am so glad she did. We go back to the 70’s as well. She has been my friend longer than any other. Her life is good, she is a grandmother now and totally into that sweetness.

The thing I am not speaking too much of is Dad’s cancers, both melanoma (neck and shoulder area) which he has had roughly 4 operations on.

And now squamous cell carcinoma in his throat/base of tongue. They have decided to do a 5 days/7 weeks of radiation on that.. the doctors say he should be able to beat it. I don’t know. He was much more active than I had thought he would be. But he doesn’t feel good at all, he is just doing what he can do till he can’t do it any more.

We did the usual 4th of July picnic out on the lake (these are from a few years ago..but it’s the same thing) with a lot of aunts and uncles and cousins. Good to catch up with them, it all seems so surreal at times though. Our life here is so very different than any ones back there.

The Return Trip

I had a total body break down at the end of the toxic Michigan stay.
Part was bad bed and pillow which caused an old injury to arm/shoulder to reappear. I couldn’t even raise my arm to dress, brush hair, eat (right arm). This started the last week we were there.
Not good. And the hives had started too. I try to eat as clean as food as possible, but …. any way for what ever reason my hands were swelling up. Then motel night 1.. got a severe sinus drip and intense whole body swelling.. took a antihistamine and knocked my self out for a few hours only. Got up at 4am.. flight at 6am.. worst airport food any where (Detroit).. got to Denver.. no time to get decent food there either. I did pack some stuff, but wasn’t good enough.

Got into Sacramento… smoke… fires..100 plus degrees… running on adrenalin by now. Russel just muscling me through to our car… the 4 runner battery was dead. Russel jumped started it and we went to Woodland and bought a battery. Ate some not so good pancakes and eggs and he wanted to keep going.. it was only 11 am here. So we drove on too Clear Lake (2+ hours) where I had booked a room (Best Western) in case we couldn’t drive all the way.

Good thing, I was about to lose it bad. Nice motel there .. and friendly staff. But I needed to eat, but felt total nausea, got R to get a baked potato from the motel eatery. What happened next was the total break down. Hives, rapid heart beat, head ache, dizzy, so much more… I told Russel to find out where an emergency room was cause I didn’t know if I would make it. I passed out at this point.

Good bed and we had our pillows, I woke up feeling better than I had in a few days. It doesn’t sound like much when writing this down, but I don’t ever remember having my system that stressed by something I still don’t know why.

It took several days before I was normal… other things I won’t mention here were happening too.

The sun came up like a red rubber ball in the Sacramento valley.
And went down as a red orange ball here in the hills. For some reason my camera wasn’t capturing the redness of the sun??

Homestead in spring

Very stressed about the Michigan trip coming up in June. Not writing much here.

This is spring time on the land before we leave:

On My Beat

Living in the hills of southern Humboldt