weekend activities, good and bad

We had our second tai chi class this past week and I’ve put together a routine of about 7 movements we’ve learned in class. The movements have long fancy names, like Two Hands Hold Up The Heavens. I generally think of the ones I’m doing as standing, stretching, floating, bending, pushing, pulling, and walking. I also looked up a series of movements called ‘8 pieces of brocade’ which our instructor talks about. It’s eight movements, each one affecting, clearing, or strengthening specific parts of the body, organs, and chi (life force energy). I’ve watched videos of the eight brocades by three different practitioners and while the flows all have the same name, the movements vary a bit by practitioner. I’m doing the tai chi every morning, well, except Thursday, and sometimes some yoga as well but I’m still going to the three evening yoga classes so I’m not too concerned about doing a full yoga routine every morning. I’ll reserve judgement of whatever difference or benefit I’m feeling from the tai chi until I’ve been doing it consistently for about a month. 

The last two mobiles are done, 9 in all, and now I need to figure out how to price them. Right now they’re all hanging in the west and north facing windows in the corner in my workroom. They look pretty good hanging there, they make me happy to look at them. I guess I’m going to have to keep one but deciding which is going to be hard. I also need to figure out packaging, some sort of box for people to transport it easily without it getting all twisted up. It won’t do to just stick it in a bag. Anyway, here’s the last two. One is not crystals but strips of colored glass from a previous project.

I knew I was done with them because that last one, being the last and mainly doing it just to use up the last of the crystals, was days in making, I was all but over bending wire, but I finished it last night then scooped up all the bits of wire and other trash, put away the spools of various wire, and put away the tools so now my table is clear and ready for the next whatever. I think I’ll start with the art journal while I consider my options.That clever and artistic Linda Sue is thinking of making shrines with the 8 cigar boxes she has and I thought that was a cool idea. I don’t have any boxes suitable for that kind of thing but it got me thinking about shadow boxes, 3 dimensional dioramas, painting and cutting out the elements and layering them with space between. 

There are now 6 tomato plants sitting on the end of my desk that need to go in the ground. 

Plus I still want to transplant some of the healthy looking I don’t know what’s, maybe cucumber or possibly a squash out of the compost bin. 

I did get out there earlier today and finished weeding and turning the big garden area, weeded and turned the small plot where I had zinnias last year. Yesterday I went to the feed store and got potting soil, composted peat, composted manure, and some landscapers mix. The mix is to work into a flowerbed in the little backyard where I want to put a coral porterweed in the ground, get it out of the pot. It’s a volunteer I dug up two years ago in case I’m unsuccessful in protecting and keeping it alive but I’ve had the one in the ground for 4 or 5 years so I think I don’t need to keep it in a pot.

Wren report, denied access to the house, she has started to build a new nest in the pot of maidenhair fern by the backdoor. At least I think it’s the same one. I’ve seen her going in there four or five times with dead plant material in her beak.

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Once again our illustrious leader Trumplethinskin, the so called Peace President, the man who claims he has ended 8 wars in his first year, who feels slighted by the Nobel Committee because they have not awarded him the Peace Prize he thinks he so richly deserves, the self appointed supreme leader for life of his new Board Of Peace, has illegally, without the consent of Congress, and unprovoked bombed the shit out of another sovereign nation. This time Iran, a nation that imposed no immediate threat and during ongoing negotiations, without warning and in conjunction with Israel starting Saturday morning and continuing through the weekend killing 150 Iranian little girls. I’m sure we all feel much safer now that those heinous elementary school girls are dead. They did succeed in killing Iran’s supreme leader and many in the upper echelon of the government but Iran is not Iraq or Venezuela. Iran is a big country with a strong military and some powerful allies and the whole region is going up with Iran retaliating against not only Israel but every Arab country that deals with the US and allows US army bases in country. Trumplethinskin is an idiot and a dangerous one. He has no concept of history or the delicate balance in the Middle East and how easily it goes up in flames. Not only is he Putin’s puppet in Putin’s attempt to dismantle NATO and destroy American influence, now he is Netanyahu’s puppet, goaded into this aggression by Saudi Arabia’s lap dog Jared Kushner whispering in T.r.u.m.p’s ear how this will be great for future real estate opportunities in the region. So the man who has been sidelined by the nations of Europe and Canada creating new defense networks and trade agreements excluding the US, whose ego demands he be the biggest bully and the most feared, who equates threats with statecraft has given the hornets nest a big whomping. And he doesn’t give a fuck who dies, how many Americans and other innocents he has put at risk in the Middle East. It won’t be him and that’s all he cares about. 

This is a link to an essay by an Australian. Worth the read I think.

To end with something more pleasant, Cat sleeping on the lap blankets on the back of the couch that we no longer need but haven’t been put away yet. 

springy, warm, and an unexpected gift

Today is as still as Wednesday was windy, not even a tiny breeze nor tinkle from a wind chime.

I am overwhelmed. Thursdays are my fullest busiest day of the week and I have no time for online shenanigans. This morning it seems every blog I read posted yesterday and my inbox has about 30 new emails. 

The little wren is pissed. She has added a lot to her nest in the light fixture over the past four days. When I got home from SHARE yesterday she was in the house, in the fixture, and flew out the open back door when I came in the garage door. This morning, she is perched just outside the open back door scolding me sitting at my desk and Cat laying on the big table. When I went in the kitchen to fix breakfast she flew in and perched on the desk lamp 

and when I was sitting at the dining room table where I have a line of sight to the fixture, she was in there rustling around rearranging the leaves of her nest. When she flew out I got up and closed the door. It won’t do for her to actually lay eggs so I’m going to have to keep the door closed from now on. Or else get a screen door.

So Thursdays…SHARE and we were busy but not overwhelmed, probably just over 30 food orders, mostly bigger ones. I forgot to ask but that’s about how many when it’s steady and I can keep up with refilling the baskets (A, B, C, D, E according to the size of the family) so that all the guys have to do is pull the appropriate basket(s) off the shelf when a food order comes in to which they add all kinds of other stuff from their section and from whatever produce donations came in that morning. 

Yesterday after SHARE I took the accumulated cardboard from the day to the recycling container, on the way home stopped by to see my friend who is battling cancer and bring her whatever produce or milk that is left over (she and her husband have custody of three of their grandchildren), fixed lunch, after lunch took about a 30 minute nap, walked the dog, fed the cats, hung out with Paisleigh for another half hour, and then hightailed it to yoga. When class ended, Susan came over and said don’t rush off, Bruce has something for you. As we were leaving I walked to the truck with Bruce, he reached in and handed me this

with this lovely inscription. 

I show off pictures of whatever art thing I’m working on with them and Stephanie and I guess Bruce really liked the birds I did on the notecards and so he gifted me this book. So now, I need, want, to do a little painting of one of the birds in the book for him as a thank you. 

Walking the yard after breakfast I was met with two surprises, the first amaryllis and the first iris.

All plans to work in the yard today have evaporated because I have a primary care office visit this afternoon which I have to leave for soon. And now I’m back and all is well and I learned I have aged out of mammograms and poop tests/colonoscopies unless I’m having actual problems or if I just want to get my boobs squished and poop in a jar for old times sake.

I doubt I’ll be able to catch up on all the posts I have missed yesterday and today because tomorrow y’all will have posted again so I'll just sally forth into the future.

 

windy day, crappy night, little frogs

It’s very windy outside today. Not only are all the wind chimes going off madly but the wind is adding a roar of its own. I had thought I would work on the garden some today but not if this wind keeps up, sustained 22 mph with gusts up to 45 mph. I had a crappy night last night and don’t feel like being battered by the wind. I need to go get potting soil and compost from the feed store and I have something coming up in the compost bin, cucumbers maybe? Could be acorn squash, definitely some tomatoes. The plan is to remove the biggest best looking ones and get them planted in the ground and see what they become. Then I want to add last year’s compost to the garden space. I’m only planning on planting tomatoes and green beans, maybe some squash which never do well. I get one or two and then the plants succumb to vine borers.

So my crappy night. The dog would not settle down. Wanted out multiple times. The cat kept wanting to lay on me and she’s heavy and between the two of them they kept pinning me down so I could barely move to shift positions. During one of the times I got up to let the dog out I collected the nail file, nail scissors, and clippers to work on my ingrown toenail that had started to be painful (I mean, why not, I was awake). All I managed to do was make it hurt more. Then, we have a rat in the house/walls. goddammit. The first time it woke me chewing inside the wall of my bedroom I got up and kicked the wall enough times it left. Several nights later, last night, it was back. Again, kicking the wall with my other foot and then banging on the wall higher up as it scampered up to the attic but it didn’t come back. And finally, just before dawn the dog wanted out again and this time I let her out, left the door open enough for her to get back in whenever and went back to bed. So I am not in the mood for any foolishness today. The only thing I can say is I’m glad it’s not Thursday.

I have seven mobiles (you've already seen two of these) and enough crystals to make one more and some colored glass strips from a previous glass doo dad thing I had made years ago and that hung outside and finally fell apart that I could make another mobile with (I’ve already used some on two). I guess I’ll work on those today. They'll be the last though because my fingertips are getting sore from bending all that wire.

This is a talavera pedestal to a bird bath. I woke up one morning to find the dish that sat on top on the ground in pieces so I’ve been using a plastic pot tray with a rock to hold it down as a basin until I can find a ceramic glazed pot tray to use. I had picked it up to rinse it out and when I did I saw this…

four little tree frogs.

Here’s a fun little test/game about how well we remember color. I’m not going to tell you how poorly well I did but in my defense, I did it this morning and there was a lot of glare and reflection on my monitor.

a nest in an unlikely place and other doings

Believe it or not I do proofread my posts before I publish and still they escape me. Last post, it should have been ‘garden’ soil not ‘green’ and spring grasses and ‘weeds’ not ‘winds’. Besides the spring grasses and weeds these warmer days have also brought the fire ants back up to the surface. Oh joy.

The other day I walked into my studio room/office and startled a wren in the house and out it flew through the open door to the little backyard. This is not an unusual occurrence in the spring when I have the door open and no screen as they are curious little birds and they like to build nests in places like the garage and barn. The last day or two I’ve noticed some dried plant material on my desk and the floor, not a whole lot and I thought maybe it had come in on Cat. Yesterday morning I happened to look up at the light fixture above me to see this…

I climbed up on the desktop to get a better look. 

Wouldn’t it be cool if she did lay eggs and hatch some babies except, you know, it’s indoors and access to the outside is limited and then there’s a resident cat who would be happy to pounce on the little fledglings. 

I finally got out there Friday and started working on two of the garden plots. Didn’t get the all the weeds out of the bigger one but got three fourths done. I saw that one of my clumps of narcissus finally decided to bloom. 

I was going to spend the rest of the day doing what I really want to do which is work on the current mobile but that didn’t happen, only spent about a half hour and then it was more outside work; fertilize and water all the pots, use an organic poison on the fire ant mounds and water that in, walk the dog, feed the outside cats, and fix dinner which was a sort of cheaters cabbage roll casserole. I already had ground beef, onion, celery, garlic in the freezer left over from stuffed bell peppers so I chopped some cabbage and sautéed it, added in the meat mixture and some of my tomato sauce from last year, put it all in a baking dish, covered it with leftover mozzarella and baked it for about 20 minutes.

Yesterday morning after breakfast I went across the street and worked on cutting back stuff for about an hour and so another big pile to be moved to the burn pile. Spent the rest of the day finishing the armature for the bigger mobile and trying to arrange the crystals to get a balance in weight and shape. Harder than it seems as I spent hours moving them around from spot to spot and finally had to make two adjustments to the armature, replacing one of the arms completely and adding an extension to one end. 

Still not completely happy with it so I imagine I’ll be futzing around with it again today and since it turned cold again last night, currently in the 40s, I won’t be distracted by the outdoors. Maybe. It’s a pretty day, cloudless blue sky and it will warm up. At the very least I should gather up some of the piles and if not get them to the burn pile at least get them in the back of the truck.

small things

I finished Robin’s blanket Sunday (the letters look black but they are really deep purple and dark blue).

I bought a handful of old chandelier crystals last December for a little project I had in mind and yesterday I started on making little mobiles for hanging in a window or wherever. I’ve finished two, my goal is five but I need more crystals, easily attained at one of the junk/antique shops here. A little craft work instead of painting or sewing.

I saw the first 10 petal anemone on Sunday while I was pruning back the rock rose in the east flower bed.

I finished cutting back the dead rangoon creeper; in my yard I cut back the lantana, fall aster, yellow bells, rock rose, mist flower, and started on the wild mexican petunias and have piles of debris scattered all over the yard for later gathering.

I’ve been very good about my morning tai chi and yoga routines.  

I bought the first three tomato plants Monday but I have yet to turn the garden soil and get out the weeds.

Today is grocery day, tomorrow we do Costco, and Friday I get bloodwork done in advance of my PC appointment next week.

We’ve watched a couple of movies; Sinners, a weird little vampire movie in the Jim Crow days of the south during the opening night of a black juke joint and One Battle After Another about an ex-anti-establishment revolutionary pursued 15 years later by a corrupt military officer. It's better than it sounds, is up for an Oscar I think, and stars Leonardo DiCaprio as the ex-revolutionary and Sean Penn as the military officer.  

Little signs of spring besides the anemone and the warmer days…spring grasses and weeds are exploding, the mock orange/dogwood has a few green leaves sprouting, the maple tree is blooming, the dwarf redbud tree in a pot is putting out a few blooms (dwarf because it’s in a pot), the first azalea.

I’ve gone back and forth about writing about this but here goes. Not to sound like a whiny baby but are people getting my posts? It’s just that lately some of the people who have regularly commented in the past are missing, and of course no one is obligated to comment, but I see that they leave comments on other blogs that we both follow. So I’m just wondering, are my posts not being seen or am I just boring?

the day didn't go quite as planned

I’ve taken all the plants inside back outside with the exception of the plumerias and the cereus in the garage. I’ll wait a little longer for those but it is definitely spring. The birds are certainly convinced, the mockingbirds and cardinals singing their little hearts out and there’s a little wren poking around in the pot plants just outside the open door. It’s time for me to get out there and turn the dirt and get ready to plant for a spring garden. Not today though. I want to finish Robin’s blanket and it’s supposed to rain later and supposedly definitely tomorrow which is good if it does because we really need rain.

Well, my day didn’t go as planned but that’s ok. I had told Paisleigh yesterday I would spend time with her today and I’m thinking between 3:30 and 5 but Mikey brought her over about 11 this morning so instead of sewing Paisleigh and I played with a toy putting colored squares in the indicated spot in a grid to complete a picture, drew with the sidewalk chalk on the driveway...her apple tree, cats, and hopscotch (I added the numbers in the order that the 'squares' appeared)...

played hide and seek, blew some of the whistles in my whistle collection, she ate blueberries while I swept my bedroom and studio room/office, walked the dog while she rode her bike down to the other end of the street and back, and then I took her back over to her dad about 2 1/2 hours later. I did get a bit of sewing done on Robin’s blanket (still have to add the blanket binding and the ribbon trim).

The first tai chi class was Tuesday evening at Hesed House, outside under the pergola behind the welcome center. It was a pretty large group, 15 - 20 people showed up. The first thing she did was have us stand perfectly still, relaxed with good posture for five minutes with our eyes closed, just being, not thinking, a simple exercise on maintaining balance, basically the mountain pose in yoga. She recommends us doing this every day for five or ten minutes. During the hour she led us through maybe seven or eight movements, I didn’t really count same as I didn’t count the number of people. It’s a slow mindful practice, elegant even. I’ll definitely continue going to the class and make an attempt to incorporate it in my mornings, tai chi on my yoga class days, yoga on the other days. Wednesday morning I spent my five minutes standing still with my eyes closed and was surprised when the alarm went off, thought it would feel much longer with my mind wondering if it’s been five minutes yet. Instead I focused on what I was doing, felt a little like learning to drive, a continuous series of small, in this case tiny, corrections, slight swaying trying to find that sweet spot of being perfectly balanced. Then I did ten repetitions of the few basic movements I could remember, sort of like when I first started doing yoga consistently. I would go to class and then the next day at home trying to remember what we did and how we did it. Today I did both, five movement of tai chi, though I’m not sure I have one of them exactly right, and most of my daily yoga routine.

Thursday being SHARE day I did neither tai chi nor yoga. It’s all I can manage to shower, have a cup of coffee, have breakfast with my second cup of coffee (black, that you very much), and get there by nine. I actually got there a little early so I could make sure my station was stocked and the ladies up front had already let the folks in that were waiting outside. So it was a busy day with mostly large food orders. It was supposed to be a food delivery day from the regional food bank but the town finally started repaving the alley (one big pot hole after another) that the truck comes down to deliver and the people picking up their food orders, half nicely newly paved, the other have completely torn up so it was closed. Jan put off delivery until next week. And apparently, we are no longer getting our Elder volunteers from the Mormon church here. Elder being an oxymoron since the boys are 18/19. They haven’t shown up for two weeks now.

My night to fix dinner and I have no idea what so I’d best get in there and figure it out.