In which it rains and rains

Yesterday was the first clear day in what seemed like a week of rain. We got out briefly on Monday to deal with the dirt in my tomato pots. After trying to grow tomatoes in my vegetable garden, I gave up about five years ago because they didn’t seem to get enough sunshine. I bought a large garden wagon and eventually accumulated three pots about the size that you get small trees in, and I have the tomato wagon located on the place on our back deck that gets the most sunshine (but I can move it if I want to).

My plants arrived on Friday, and I knew I couldn’t plant them until the weekend, so I left them in the package for a day. Then on Saturday I unpacked them, and I’m glad I didn’t leave them any longer, because the tomatoes looked pretty droopy. I also got three blue petunias I didn’t remember ordering. I don’t know what possessed me. I don’t even like petunias very much, but I can see myself ordering blue ones just because they are blue. I still didn’t have time to plant the plants, so I sat them in the left kitchen sink with an inch of water, and in no time they looked much better.

On Saturday we did go into town and buy some potting soil, because I dump my pots into the big garden every year and replace the soil. Not that it did much good last year. One of the plants I received last year was so small that it was just starting to get big enough to bear a tomato when it got too cold. Anyway, then the trick was to get enough of a break in the rain to dump the pots, since my pots are so big I have to get Wayne to do it.

Finally, we got some sun on Monday, and Wayne dumped the pots. However, it turned out we didn’t have enough soil to fill them. We had to drive to the Amboy hardware store and buy some more soil. Of course, it started raining again on the way home, but I was determined to get my tomatoes planted, so I mixed the soils, added the tomato food, and then planted the tomatoes.

My petunias are still in the sink while I try to figure out where to put them. I remember that I didn’t plan to plant any vegetables this year, my garden last year having been a failure (and now the walls are breaking because Wayne ran the soaker hoses along them two years ago instead of along the middle, and they rotted, so the dirt is falling out). However, the problem with that plan is that my chard, which didn’t grow well last year, survived the winter, and is now sitting there almost big enough to pick. My plan for this year was to thin out my raised flower beds and turn my vegetable garden into a flower garden, but my sage is taking over one corner, my chard another, the artichoke a third, and a lot of space is dedicated to asparagus, which continues to come up every year.

I was supposed to go to some lilac gardens in Woodland with my brother and sister-in-law on Monday, but it was raining too much. We postponed our trip to tomorrow, when it’s supposed to be sunny. It’s supposed to be sunny today, too. It isn’t so far, but at least it’s not raining. We even heard thunder on Monday.

Otherwise, this week on Friday Luke and I went to visit Christine. She usually feeds me breakfast, but this time, I made two broccoli quiches the day before and took one over for breakfast. It was about time I made breakfast. We had a nice time as usual.

In my art class, I messed up my painting again. A few weeks ago, the substitute instructor wanted me to paint over some grass with the paint I have been using for snow. (It’s actually a light blue, very blue, but it looks white on the canvas.) However, the grass was still slightly wet from the week before, so I ended up with two blotches of light green paint. That looks pretty bad, and I haven’t been able to correct it yet, because the paint hasn’t been totally dry. I expected Oksana, my usual instructor, back last week, but she was still gone. The sub showed me a technique for making snow by putting very oily paint on a paint brush, the kind for painting walls, and flicking it onto the canvas. Well, I got too carried away with it trying to cover some bushes, so later, we had to remove some of it. The technique for doing that is to use a clean paintbrush to spread oil on the paint and then blot it with a tissue. However, the sub tried to help and smeared the paint. I think I got all the smears off, but I am kind of dreading to see my painting this morning when I go to class. I took a photo of it as usual, but I won’t share it, because it doesn’t look good.

Wayne in his new sunglasses

Otherwise, yesterday was Wayne’s birthday. I gave him a pair of sunglasses that he wanted me to order a few months ago until he saw the price. They have some technology called Eagle Eyes. I figured, if he wants them, I’ll get them for his birthday. Usually, he uses those ugly brown glasses that people wear over their glasses even though since last year he hasn’t needed to wear glasses underneath. Those glasses are really cheap, but they also break easily, and he has broken most of them.

Anyway, he was pleased with his gift. We also planned to go out to eat, but he said he didn’t feel like it, so we stayed home.

That was our exciting week.

In which we have a family dinner

Most of this week’s activities were based around a family dinner on Saturday evening. My youngest brother and his wife were going to be in the area for the first time in years, because on Sunday he was photographing a race in Longview. They arrived on Saturday and were staying at my middle brother’s new townhouse, and my middle brother and wife were hosting a family potluck that night.

On Wednesday after art class, I stopped by to visit my middle brother and his wife and watched him hang their kayaks in the garage. My brother told me that my niece was sick and probably wasn’t going to be able to come, and he asked me if I could make pies in addition to the corn pudding they requested as my contribution. I said yes.

So, on Friday afternoon, I baked two peach pies, as I have a lot of peaches still left in my freezer. Then on Saturday afternoon I made the corn pudding and Wayne and I drove to Battle Ground. We had a very nice time. It was great to see my youngest brother and his wife. The last time I saw them was two years ago when she won several days at a large cottage on the seaside and they invited members of the family to stay with them. And although they used to come to Yacolt for the holidays each year, usually for New Years, they haven’t made it in a long time, because they always get sick. We were all there except my poor niece’s sick family. Actually, only my niece was sick, but the flu had gone through the entire family, so they were worried about passing it on to us older folks.

Everyone made it into this photo except my great nephew, who is somewhere on the floor. The hosts for this shindig are the two in the front left.

On Sunday afternoon, I went back over to hang out with them. We just sat around and chatted in different combinations until dinner time, when we went over to the pub to eat. I didn’t get home until around 9 PM. It was great to see everyone. My youngest brother tried to set up a photo of all the siblings, but he didn’t get to take it on Saturday because my oldest brother’s wife wanted to leave, and he wasn’t able to arrange it on Monday because of appointments. He and his wife stopped by their house on their way out of town.

On Tuesday, I finally returned to exercise class and it doesn’t seem to have done me any harm.

I learned that the new tai chi class in Battle Ground is not starting until June. We have a difference of opinion about whether to go to the Thursday class at 5:30 PM or the Friday class at 9 AM. It will be the three of us, me and my middle brother and his wife. The women want to go on Friday, but my brother doesn’t want to get up that early. We’ll see how it turns out. Maja may go to the Thursday class, but she has Zumba on Fridays now.

Our weather has been cool and sunny except for the last two days, when it warmed up enough enough for me to go to exercise class yesterday in only a t-shirt and my sweatpants. However, today it is supposed to get colder and rain for a few days. It is definitely cloudy this morning.

Off and on, I have seen sightings of our mallard and his partner in the pond, usually the male at this point. However, a few days ago I saw three ducks in the pond, and they were all brown ones. I don’t know if they were just stopping by or what. The mallard didn’t seem to be around.

Some of my tulips

Blooming is going on all around us. Our cherry trees are in blossom. I have tried to photograph them in years before, but they just don’t come out looking that good. However, there are lots of pretty fruit trees all around the area. Just not at our place. My oldest brother’s cherry trees look really good, I understand. My tulips are out, so here’s a picture of that. I notice that my tulip photos from previous years were taken in May, so we are apparently more forward this year. Those pansies that you can see faintly in the background are ones that I planted years ago that never went away. So much for them being annuals! One has even planted itself below this box in the lawn.

I paid the rest of the money for my cruise this week, so we are all ready to go except for various tasks like getting the newest Covid vaccine, making sure my phone is going to work in Europe and so on. Also, we may decide to get tickets for a show in London.

Time to get ready for art class.

In which my car makes me nervous

I won’t say that it’s been a very active week, just an irritating one at times.

I attended my last exercise class for a month, because my instructor is going to Australia on vacation and the gym can never get substitutes because of a stupid policy. I went to art class on Wednesday and did a make-up on Friday, so I had lots of art. I wouldn’t be surprised if I was finished with my baby peacock soon.

My Sunday was enlivened by receiving an email from Goodreads that told me they had removed one of my reviews because it violated their review policy. The violation was that I simply wrote “See my review here” with a link to the review. I was totally unaware that they had a review policy or that anything I had done violated it, but it seems all of my reviews violate the policy, despite my having asked, when I started doing that, if it was okay. Anyway, if you’re interested in all the gory details, you can check out my post about why I quit using Goodreads.

So, that was fun. I was hopping mad all of Sunday.

Sunday was a nice, spring-like day, and I told myself I should go out and trim all the bushes that I should have trimmed back in the late fall only it was pouring rain every day. However, I feel like I have been behind on my reading ever since January, so I didn’t.

Monday, of course, it started raining again.

Tuesday was the most action-packed day of my week. On Tuesdays, Wayne always goes early to the store, mostly to buy things we already have. When he came back, he said he had a flat tire. He put the little bitty spare on the car and called the tire shop in Battle Ground to see if I could drop the tire for repair on my way to take Luke to his grooming appointment and then pick it up on the way back. I decided that the idea of driving all the way to Brush Prairie and back on that little tire made me very nervous, so I got ready really early (Luke’s appointment was at 12:30) and just took Luke to the tire store.

On the way there, I kept the speed down to about 40, because I’ve had one of those little spare tires go flat on me before, and put my flashers on for the highway. Even so, one jerk, once we came to a passing zone, almost side-swiped me on purpose and blared his horn at me.

As soon as I got on our main road, the car flashed me a litany of things that weren’t working and the Check Engine and Alt Oil Temp lights came on as well. I didn’t know what the last one meant, but it didn’t sound good. However, this has happened before when we had a problem with the car. I drove in to the tire store and once we were there and I had Luke settled with some water, I looked up the blinky lights I didn’t understand and saw that for the Alt Oil Temp light I was supposed to pull over and wait for it to turn off. Oops!

While we were there, people came over to admire Luke.

Luke and I got out of the tire store just in time for his appointment. All the lights were still on in the car all the way out to his grooming appointment and all the way back home except that the Alt Oil Temp light went off almost immediately. I was starting to think I would have to make an early appointment for service because the Check Engine light was still on. I had run off that morning as soon as I got dressed, so I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet. I had just enough time to do that and sit down for a few minutes afterward when Luke’s groomer pinged me to let me know he was almost ready.

The warning lights on my car finally turned off on my way back from picking up Luke, and we are back to normal.

In the evening I had invited my brother and his wife for a welcome dinner out. We planned to go for Szechuan food, but my sister-in-law looked up the menu to decide what she wanted to eat and discovered they aren’t open on Tuesdays, so we went for sushi instead. I had miso soup and two fancy rolls. My brother had a sushi and sashimi combo, and I was teasing him about how much more interesting my food was. My sister-in-law had a delicious-looking big bowl of noodle soup. By the end of the meal, I had converted my brother to rolls by letting him have a section of each of mine.

We had a really nice dinner. They invited me to join them in some concerts they are attending this spring, although I would have to sit by myself because they have already bought their tickets. I guess I could do that. I haven’t been doing anything much culturally since I moved here because I feel reluctant to drive into Portland by myself. I also brought along a Oregon Shakespeare Festival brochure, and we went as far as selecting some dates we’d all like to go, based on what we want to see.

My supposedly purple rose

We have had our two weeks of snow and ice, and then the temperatures went up to the 50’s for a while, much warmer than usual, and now we are back to the 40’s with nights sometimes being frosty. And what do you suppose has happened? One of my rose bushes has had one flower come out. The flowers on this bush are supposed to be purple (they are actually more of a maroon), and this one is pink, but I suppose if you’re going to have roses blooming at completely inappropriate times of the year, you can’t complain.

I have also noticed that lots of my bulbs have leaves sticking up out of the ground. Since it’s quite likely that we could have more bad weather, including snow, I don’t know if it will hurt them at all. I counted nine of my newest daffodils already coming up in the orchard, plus a bunch of tulip leaves sticking up in my raised beds.

And speaking of life, we had a pair of ducks on the pond on Monday. I don’t know if they have stayed or not.

In which I give my knee a twinge

OK, I admit it. The reason this photo looks blurry is because I took it out the windshield while I was driving.

It’s been my favorite kind of weather lately, when it hasn’t been raining. I love it when the fall colors are out and the sky is dark and brooding, the air is cold and brisk. I know it’s dangerous, but I took a photo of the road yesterday on my way to Christine’s while I was driving, and yesterday afternoon I took a photo of our back yard with a rainbow.

A rainbow briefly appeared before it started raining again yesterday.

Aside from taking Luke to visit Christine on Monday, I didn’t do much else. I planned to go back to my senior exercise classes on Tuesday, but on Sunday I was out in the orchard planting bulbs and did something to my knee. I don’t know what I did, only that when I came back in, it was very painful to get my foot out of my muck books. My knee was painful the rest of the day and the next one, although it improved a lot on Tuesday. I’ll see how it is next week before trying to go exercise.

I was worrying last week about my bulbs. I may have mentioned my project to recreate in my orchard the knoll by my aunt and uncle’s house that was covered with daffodils every spring. Every fall, I’ve been planting a dozen or so daffodils in the orchard. The first few years, I just bought whatever yellow ones I found in the hardware or farm store, and the result was a mixture of sizes that bloomed at slightly different times. But for the last three or four years, I’ve been ordering the bulbs from a company in the Netherlands, and I get really big, strong flowers that are all the same kind and come up at the same time. My recollection was that they were mailed in October last year and took a really long time to get here from the time that I got the email saying they’d been shipped, about a month. So, when I realized last week that I hadn’t heard anything about them, I began poking around on their web site trying to find the information about the ship date for fall for my region, but I couldn’t find it, probably because it was over. Then on November 1 I got the shipping announcement, so I thought I was going to be trying to plant bulbs at Thanksgiving or even later. However, they showed up on Saturday.

So, on Sunday during the few hours that it wasn’t raining, I planted eight of them (one problem is they come in larger quantities than I actually want to plant each year, and I sometimes have to dig several holes before I can get one deep enough, that isn’t running into rock or tree roots), and on Monday I gave away four to Christine. I’ll probably give Diane from art class another four bulbs today, and I thought I’d plant another eight today, since it was one of the few days when it wasn’t supposed to rain, but that was before I hurt my knee.

Last week I finally completed the last thing I had to do to finish cleaning out our pantry after our mouse invasion last winter. I had to haul everything off the floor in the last section of the pantry and vacuum up the mouse doodoo. Which leads me to a story. When we moved, we bought a box of newsprint paper at the Uhaul store for wrapping china and glass. The box is nice and compact, but it contained so much paper that we had a lot of it left after the move. I found it came in handy for things like shucking corn and lighting the fire. I kept in on the floor of the pantry, down flat so it could be easily opened, with just a box of different types of tape on top of it. Then it vanished. At the time, I just remember being confused and thinking I hadn’t noticed I was getting low on it. After several months, I ordered some more paper, but it came in a huge roll that I’ve had sitting upright in my office, and let me tell you that it is awkward and in the way. I haven’t seen the box of paper for years.

Well, what do you think I found, tipped on its edge and pushed up against the back of the pantry with a whole bunch of things in front of it so that it wasn’t easy to get to at all, and not even visible? Before it got rearranged by you-know-who, I only had a few things that I could get at easily on that floor, and last week it was stuffed with things that shouldn’t have actually been in that pantry at all. And I probably don’t have to mention that I had said things to Wayne several times about not being able to find that box.

We still haven’t gotten our grooming schedules set up so that Christine and I can go out for breakfast on that day. Christine told me yesterday she would talk to her groomer, but I haven’t heard anything. The problem is that there are several days during the week when one or the other of the groomers doesn’t work. We need to catch them together.

And that’s it for the day. I am running late!

In which we cool down nicely

Last Wednesday was our last really hot day, and although we retreated to the basement one more time, we managed the house so that it was a few degrees cooler when we went to bed. Those couple of degrees were just enough so that we were comfortable and got some sleep for a change. Then, Thursday’s and Friday’s temperatures went way down, so that we had highs in the 80s, and now we are back down to lows in the 50s or low 60s and highs in the low 70s.

However, on Sunday and Monday we had bad air quality because of the fires in Eastern Washington and Canada. So, it was a good thing it was cool, because we had to keep our windows closed. The air quality was back to Good yesterday, though.

My injury to my side generalized itself to pain across my abdomen over the weekend, so I finally made a video appointment with my doctor to talk about whether it had anything to do with my medication. I am off one of my meds for a few weeks now. As a result of my discomfort, I haven’t been going to any of my exercise classes. I hoped to go on Tuesday, but that was when my video appointment was scheduled.

Since our groomer closed, Christine and I have been unable to get a grooming appointment on the same day. I thought I’d let her find a groomer and then try to schedule with them, but the groomer she found won’t take Keeshonds. She referred me to her “assistant,” who turned out to be another groomer who leases the premises from her on the days she doesn’t work. So, my appointment for Luke is the day after Christine’s appointment for Duchess. When we talked about it, I said I didn’t know what to do. She is happy with her groomer, and to get on the same day, I think the only thing we could do is have her switch over to mine, but I don’t think she wants to do it. If you’ve been reading this blog, then you might remember that the reason for this is because on grooming days, we offload our dogs around the same time and usually go out for breakfast or lunch. We had been planning to try a British fish and chips cart in Vancouver this time until our groomer closed.

We decided to leave Duchess home by herself, since she barks constantly in the car, and take Luke to pick up fish and chips at the cart and then take them to Fort Vancouver, which has a large park area and eat them at a picnic table. The weather was perfect, so that’s what we did. It was a bit too long of a drive between the cart and the fort, though, for the fish to taste as delicious as it did when Wayne and I got it and ate it right there in the car. (The cart has no accommodations for sitting. They said they put out picnic tables, and someone removed them. Stole them? They don’t know.) Also, we both ordered drinks, and we were ten minutes away before we realized they didn’t give them to us. They are supposed to open a “restaurant” (he said it wasn’t exactly a restaurant, so I don’t know what that means) in a different location and are moving the cart there the next week, so we decided there is no point in returning until they have that built. Christine told me that after she reheated the fish, it tasted a lot better, which is what Wayne and I experienced when we ate it right away.

Because of my injury, I have been a home body the past few weeks, so that’s my only outing. I skipped art class last week because of lack of sleep over two nights, which made me suspect I wouldn’t be able to concentrate. However, I am going today.

On our first beautiful day after the heat wave, Wayne called me outside before I was dressed, telling me to come out and enjoy the day. I think this was on Saturday. I threw on my clothes and ended up finally finishing deadheading my roses. I don’t know if I’ll have a second bloom or not. I usually do, but Christine’s roses went into second bloom weeks ago. I also need to do more watering. I did it one time during the heat wave, and the plants were droopy, even the cone flowers, which are usually heat resistant. I think I might have lost my blueberry bushes. I have been remiss about watering this summer. The only things I have watered regularly are my fuchsia hanging basket and my tomatoes. By the way, we ate my first and practically only tomatoes last night. We had one grape tomato and one small tomato divided between us. They were delicious. I have some other grape tomatoes coming in, but I only have one other tomato on the other bush. You might remember that one of my three plants never grew, so that it is only about six inches tall, and it produced tomatoes that are about 1/4-inch in diameter.

My latest freebie from the British Library

I received another shipment of review books from British Library, or in this case book. This one is from the Women Writers series. I just finished reading my last book from the Crime Classics series, so it was nice to get this one.

On Monday, I went to get my flu and Covid booster for the year. Wayne didn’t want to go with me to get his shots on Monday, so he said he’d do it when he picked up our prescriptions yesterday. However, he forgot. I suspect he’ll continue to forget, which was why I wanted him to go with me on Monday. It wasn’t too bad. No one was ahead of me, and after checking in, I just had to wait about ten minutes.

That leaves only one thing left to do besides packing to prepare for my trip to Illinois in two weeks. I have to get my American Airlines membership straightened out, maybe. I vaguely remember being a member years ago, and that has resulted in their system not letting me sign up under another email. I don’t have to sign up, but I think it may make it easier to use their app. However, it looks like I’m going to have to call someone to straighten it out, and I’m not looking forward to it, so I’ve been procrastinating.

In which we get our cupboards back in order

My middle cupboard almost back under control (there is one more shelf above that isn’t in the picture)

Last Friday, I finally declared the mouse battle over, not having seen a sign of a mouse for a couple weeks, so we started reclaiming our pantry cupboards. I needed Wayne to do the top shelf all the way across, because I try not to climb onto ladders anymore. So, on Friday, we took everything off the top shelf, and then he vacuumed up the mouse poop and disinfected the shelf. Then I started with the other shelves. I am taking my time, but so far I have almost finished all the food shelves. All I have to do on the middle cupboard is put a few things back on the bottom shelf and take everything off the floor and sweep it. Then I have one big bin I have to unload. After that, it’ll be the cupboard that has the dishes in it. That one is going to be a pain, since we will have to wash every dish except the ones we have used recently. For now, we are leaving the boxed and bagged food in plastic bins.

In art class on Wednesday, the background of my winter painting hadn’t dried yet, so I couldn’t trace my drawing onto it. Instead, I returned to my peacock painting and did a second coat of the background. It looks pretty nice now, although there is one blurry plant in the background I haven’t painted yet.

I attended exercise class on Thursday, but our instructor told us it may be canceled on Tuesday, because she was going to be out. And sure enough, it was.

On Saturday there was a two-day retreat for tai chi that I had no interest in going to. Instead, Luke and I paid Christine a visit. I had picked up blackberries and raspberries at BiZi Farms on Thursday, and because I knew Christine likes apple-blackberry pie, I made one Friday afternoon. It was really hot that day, and I waited too long to shut the house up and turn on the air conditioning. Plus, it didn’t seem to be cooling the house like it usually does. So I didn’t get much done but the pie after I helped Wayne with his shelf. I felt kind of sick in the afternoon from the heat and had to rest. Our kitchen looked like hell with all the unwashed dishes from the morning, the dishes from making the pie, and all the junk out from our shelf-cleaning project.

On Saturday, I had containers of berries to take Christine and the pie. But I also hadn’t given her the painting yet. If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll know it was a painting of her with both of our dogs. (You can see it here.) I started working with a photo of her and my dog in her backyard. (She was with my dog because she was trying to help me get a good photo of him by distracting him, but it didn’t really work.) But her surroundings were uninteresting, so I found a background photo of grass and hydrangeas. Then I thought her dog should be in the picture, so I found a photo of her dog on her Facebook page and drew her next to my dog in the picture. Then since Christine was wearing flip-flops in the original photo, Oksana told me I was going to be painting toes forever if I didn’t put shoes on her feet. She liked the shoes I was wearing that day, so we put another woman in class into my shoes and took a picture of her with her legs in the same position (although we changed the color of the shoes from pink to blue). Then Oksana suggested we put her in a different chair that was more aesthetically pleasing, so we found a photo of two green wicker chairs, and I put her in one of those. So, by the time the drawing was finished, I had used a total of five reference pictures to create it, and I continued to use them throughout the process of painting the picture.

Anyway, when Christine saw it, she was so touched that she almost started crying. We immediately took down a mirror she had in her living room and put the painting up there. She told me later that her visitors had admired it and said it was a good likeness. That was the only thing that bothered me—whether it really looked like her.

It was very hot all weekend, so I occupied myself with continuing to work on my shelves. It cooled off a lot on Monday and Tuesday, but now it is going to begin to get hot again for a few days.

Wayne has had an obsession for the last few months that has been driving me crazy. We have two remote controls for our garage doors. Since we only have one car, we keep both of them in it, but a few months ago, he took one of them out and lost it. Because, as he said, he didn’t know where it was, it could be anywhere, he started physically locking the garage with a switch on the wall of the garage. I didn’t even know you could do that, so the first time I tried to open the garage door and it didn’t open, I thought it was broken. The most irritating thing, though, was when he locked it after I left for one of my classes or errands. I came back several times and was unable to open the garage door with the remote, which pretty much makes it useless (and anyway you would think would be unnecessary, since he was home). Plus, if we both went out, he would go inside after we pulled the car into the driveway, and lock that switch. It was driving me crazy because I knew, of course, that the remote control was in the house somewhere where he’d put it.

And sure enough, he found it this week, at the back of his junk drawer in the kitchen. I hope that means we’ll stop fiddling with that locking switch.

I have needed to cut back my roses. I started the job one day last week when it wasn’t too hot out, but since then I’ve been occupied with the cupboards. I’ll get back to it when I finish them, I hope by next week.

In which I work on two paintings at once

On Wednesday during art class I painted the background for my peacock painting, a blurry merging of a purply brown top, a green middle, and a sandy brown bottom. I was under orders to stay there until I finished it, which involved painting the colors quickly and then using my mop brush to blend them together. When I was done, my instructor told me I would have to redo it the next class period for it to cover well. I made a date to do a makeup on Friday.

However, on Friday my canvas was not dry. Neither of us had thought of that when we set the date for the makeup. Usually, it’s not that much of an issue if all of your painting isn’t dry, because you can always find a spot to work on, but not if you have to repaint the entire background. So, Oksana suggested I find another project to work on. I showed her the other pictures I picked out before I started the peacock. She picked out a photo I took of a tree in our front yard covered in snow, very dramatic, looking like it is almost black and white. So, I did my drawing, and then she told me to paint the entire canvas a light gray-blue, and we would transfer the drawing onto it after it dried. By that time, I had all I could do to mix the paint (Portland cool grey + white) and get the canvas covered before class was over. I have never had two projects going at once, so it will be interesting to see how that works out.

I ended up skipping exercise class on Thursday because my niece’s mother-in-law, who is a friend, was in town and that was the only time she could get together. She came over to my house to look at my painting and then we went out for coffee. We invited my sister, who lives near the coffee place, but she asked us to drop by when we were done, so we did. It was a fast visit, as she had to be back to my niece’s house by noon.

On Saturday, I just wasn’t into tai chi plus they did the set after only a few minutes of class. Usually they do exercises for about forty-five minutes and then do the set, so that by the time we are finished with the set, since it is surprisingly grueling, I am achy and tired. Then they take a fifteen-minute break, and go back to practicing one move for the last fifteen minutes of class. I don’t really understand why they don’t take the break halfway through class, because it is tiring to work for so long. But this time, they only did a few exercises before doing the set. I am there mostly to learn the set, and I hate the exercises, so I decided to leave after we finished the set. I think I would go back into the beginning class, where everyone else I was in beginning class with seems to have stayed (I see one woman in continuing every once in a while) if it wasn’t at such a late time.

On my way from tai chi, I stopped at BiZi Farms and got a half flat of blueberries. I saw that they also had marionberries, but I didn’t want to cope with two different types of berries, since even a half flat is a lot for us. So, this week I’ll probably go back and get blackberries. I set aside a pint of the blueberries to take to Christine on Monday, but as it turned out, she wasn’t feeling well, so we put off our get-together until the next Saturday. Then Saturday afternoon I made blueberry cobbler.

I also missed exercise class on Tuesday because of a long-standing doctor’s appointment, so my record on exercise this week hasn’t been that good except for walking Luke.

We had a very nice week, which was quite cool. On Monday, I think the high was only in the 50’s. It has been warming up, though, and it’s supposed to get very hot in Portland this weekend. However, if my phone is right, our local temperatures are supposed to be about 10 degrees cooler than Portland’s (usually it’s more like five degrees), so it should be mild here when it’s hot in Portland. This morning, although no rain was forecast, it began raining here briefly.

On my way home from doing errands in Saturday, I saw a bald eagle flying up above the road. Although they live in the area, it’s not often you see one, or at least not one you know is one. The last one I saw for sure was our first year here when Ray was visiting. We also have golden eagles, but I can’t tell an eagle from a hawk unless I see the white head.

I have been doing some clipping, as my roses are about done for their first bloom. However, not all the buds are out, so I’m only clipping back the dead ones so far.

In which the score is 8 down, 1 out

We continued our battle with the mice this week, catching one almost every night, although our sticky traps seem useless. With no other food available, the mice are forced to try for the peanut butter in the trap. However, we had a very adventuresome day, mousewise, on Friday.

After more than a month staring at lots of vertical lines across our television set, Wayne finally agreed to go buy a new TV on our Costco run. I sneakily arranged this by reading him out some of the prices for TVs on their web site. So, on Friday morning we were home preparing to install the new TV when Wayne said, “There’s a mouse over here,” and sure enough, in the alcove behind the TV a mouse was just standing there. This alcove is made by the end of the stair case and the windows. The mouse began to run across a ledge that runs next to the staircase, so I went around to the other side, the head of the stairs. He fell overboard and landed on the staircase, so I thought, if he wants to go downstairs, that’s just fine with me. We have had mice downstairs before, and eventually Wayne has caught them all, but I would rather have them down there than up here. However, the mouse kept coming up the stairs toward me.

Luke went down and was nose-to-nose with the mouse for a second, but he is definitely not a mouser, because he ran away. Wayne said to me, “Don’t try to pick him up, he’ll bite you,” because that’s what I was considering, as he was one step below me on the stairs. But he ran right past me and over to the entryway. We went over there thinking we could drive him outside, but Wayne thought he was in a boot tray with some boots and took it outside. No mouse.

Later that day, though, I noticed some water coming out from under the sink in the kitchen. It seems there is a loose pipe under the sink that got bumped, so Wayne fixed it better (it is attached with the wrong fittings, another example of the stellar work the guy who lived here before us did), and I was mopping up the water when I removed some things from under the sink and found a mouse stuck where there wasn’t enough space between two bottles for him to get by. I picked him up in my cloth, but I literally felt nothing, so I stupidly looked to see if I had him instead of taking the cloth outside. I had him, but he got out. I picked him up again but then dropped him, and he instantly disappeared somewhere outside the cupboard. That cupboard is self-contained, so I would like to know how he got in there in the first place. Maybe through a hole drilled for a pipe?

As if that weren’t enough, later that afternoon, Wayne walked into the kitchen and said, “There’s a mouse here.” The mouse was next to the kitchen trash can, so Wayne plopped a jar down on top of him. I slid a piece of cardboard underneath, and then we took him outside and let him go. And my question was, was that one very unlucky mouse (lucky in the long run) we kept seeing that day or three? Or two?

So, that’s it for the mouse battle so far. The contents of our cupboards are still sitting around the dining area in big plastic bins.

Getting the TV up wasn’t exactly a joy, because Wayne seems to be losing some of his technical ability (at least as far as learning to work the remote is concerned) but also because he gets so grumpy when he does things like that. I don’t dare ask a question, or I get snapped at. On the other hand, if he needs me to help, I’d better be there right away. (The reverse is not true; I remember one time hold up a light fixture that had come loose from the ceiling with one hand and calling for help. He didn’t come very fast.) As an example, he asked me to come help him lift the TV out of the top of the box. I could tell right away that wasn’t going to work. For one thing, I couldn’t get a grip on it. I told him that but he persisted in trying to lift it. Finally I told him that when trying to get such things out, I usually opened up the bottom of the box, laid the box down on its side, and slid the box off. But he insisted that there was a picture of two guys lifting it out of the box. I looked at the picture, and what it actually showed was the guys lifting the box off of the television, after, obviously, opening the bottom. That’s what we did, and it was easy. The new TV is larger but thinner and much lighter than the old one, and the picture is great.

Mice fighting and the TV were the big events of the week. Oh, and on the way to Costco I noticed that Bizi Farms had their strawberry sign up, so on Saturday on the way back from tai chi, I took a detour and bought a half flat of strawberries and some shortcake (also potatoes and apricots). Later on Saturday, we took a couple pints of strawberries over to Christine’s. That wasn’t the last time I saw her, though, as Luke and I had a date with her on Monday morning. Our only other outing besides my regular classes was a trip to vet for Luke on Wednesday afternoon to discuss his allergies. He is now going to be having a monthly injection. After that visit, we were close enough to a really good Thai restaurant for me to stop by for take-out for me and Wayne.

Here are my carpet roses.

We had several fairly hot days last week, one almost up to 90, but as of yesterday, our weather has cooled right down again. My roses are going crazy. I didn’t get out to trim them back last fall because it rained practically every day, so they are bonkers this year. They really look untidy. I’m going to have to give them a good trim after their first bloom is through.

Here are my supposedly purple roses.

At our bird feeder this week, I saw a red-winged blackbird! He came by twice in the same day. I have never seen one at the feeder, just at the nearby bird sanctuary. We are also having our annual goldfinch visits these days.

In which we continue the battle with the mice

On Wednesday afternoon after art class, I removed all the food from the pantry and put it in the plastic bins we bought the day before, throwing away all the bags and boxes with holes nibbled in them and also everything that was past its use-by date. Mouse tastes seem to run to scone mix, potato chips, brown sugar but not white, almonds but not walnuts. They don’t appear to like pretzels at all, and I was surprised to find none of my many bags of flour interfered with. I ended up throwing out an entire big garbage bag of stuff, but I was still short of bins by the size of a large plastic bin, so Wayne had to find one in the basement and empty it. I ultimately plan to put the bins back on the shelves, but right now they are sitting around the dining area on chairs. I also put out some sticky traps.

With all the food gone, the mice were forced back on peanut butter, so the next three nights we caught one mouse each night, all in the conventional trap. After the first night, I found one of the sticky traps on the floor with mouse hair and feces stuck all over it but no mouse. Since then they have stayed away from the sticky traps. I spent an afternoon vacuuming the mouse shit off the cupboard shelves, and Wayne removed the top layers of some of our dishes and sent them through the dishwasher (although I think that’s premature until we know the mice are gone). Yesterday, we thought we didn’t see any sign of mice, but then Wayne found a big hole chewed in the plastic bag of dog food that we keep on the counter, and we’re pretty sure it wasn’t there the day before. We put that food into a plastic can, and this morning everything looks okay so far, although if they really were around the night before, that means they’re not gone, since we haven’t caught a mouse since Sunday or Monday. It’ll be awfully nice once we can disinfect the pantry and get everything back to normal, although I don’t think I’m going to unpack the bins anytime soon.

Wednesday morning, Wayne brought a bunch of the bins in from the car all stacked up and managed to fall down in the kitchen. It took us about 10 minutes to get him back on his feet. He was in this turtle position on his back, and although he could sit up, it didn’t seem to occur to him to just crawl over to the counters and pull himself up. Instead, first he sent me to fetch his shoes, then a crutch he had in the closet. That clearly wasn’t going to work, so finally he got his feet out the back door. We don’t have normal-sized steps there, though, so I had to squeeze out the door and pull him up onto his feet once he got them out the door and down on the garage floor level. He has a badly bruised foot but no other injuries.

The mouse activities have distracted me from my whacking work out in the garden, so I haven’t made any more progress. And now the weather has gone from much colder than usual to hotter than usual, with the temperature up to 89 yesterday, so I haven’t really felt like working outside in the afternoons, and I’m almost always busy in the morning.

Luke and I visited Christine and Duchess on Friday, but aside from that and a routine trip to the dermatologist yesterday, we had a normal week.

It’s been a month now since our TV developed vertical stripes all down the screen, and Wayne hasn’t agreed to do anything about it, so we’ve been watching with a really bad picture. But yesterday I started reading out prices of TVs at Costco, and now we’re set for a Costco trip on Friday. And speaking of which, it was a shame we don’t have a good TV because this movie was so beautiful, but this weekend we watched The Mill and the Cross, about a painting by Bruegel. It didn’t really have much of a plot, but it was entrancing anyway. It started by sort of inserting you into the painting, and then it told short stories about some of the people playing parts in the painting, and then it finished full circle by reconstructing the painting again. All of this was done with very little dialogue. The painting is about the crucifixion, but Bruegel replaced the Roman soldiers with Spanish soldiers from the Inquisition, who were occupying the Low Countries at the time.

This was one of our last months of our disc subscription to Netflix before they discontinue it, which is a shame because I had a long list of movies on that subscription that I can’t find streaming, mostly foreign and older movies. When that service goes away, we’ll have to look into subscribing to maybe one more streaming service.

But I have a photo of my peonies, which just finally bloomed this week.

Some of my peonies

In which we see a deer in our yard for the first time in years

It was Friday when I happened to look out the living room window and see a young deer, a yearling probably, right on the other side of our raised bed planter. I tried to attract Wayne’s attention (which would be a lot easier if he would wear his hearing aids) and contain Luke while sitting perfectly still as she was looking right at me. She was all by herself, it seemed, when we used to always see them in pairs or even in fours. We looked at her for a few minutes, and then Luke (who is usually at the window barking at nothing), finally realized she was there and went berserk. That startled her, but I could see through the window by the front door that she was still in front of the house. Luke headed for the window, though, and the next thing we knew she was flying up the ridge in front of the house and over the fence. It was nice to see her, though.

And speaking of wildlife, we now have a mouse living in our pantry. The mouse is smart, because it has sprung several traps. The situation is made worse because our dishes are in the same row of connecting cupboards, so we have to either wash the top one without using it or, what I have been doing recently, leave it in place and take dishes from underneath it to use as I imagine little feet running over the top of the top one (or find little mouse droppings on it).

So, yesterday afternoon we drove to Target and bought a whole bunch of clear plastic bins. Today after art class I am going to empty the cupboards of food, throw away the things that have been partially eaten, and put all our boxed or bagged food in the bins, leaving out only the food in cans or bottles. I’m going to wash off the shelves, even though I will have to do that again when we catch the mouse, but at least he won’t have anything else he can get at. We need to buy better traps.

There hasn’t been any evidence of the mouse being in the rest of the kitchen except for the night I left out a bag of brown sugar on the counter. The next morning I found a hole nibbled in it and some sugar on the counter along with a few droppings. Ick. The only thing we usually have out on the counter are bread products, like buns in their packaging, and so far they have been left alone, but I will put them in one of the bins, too. If it starts eating the apples out in the bowl, I guess I’ll have to put them in the refrigerator.

It has been cool out this week (this morning in the 50s) after being quite hot at the end of last week. So, I have been out most days pulling vines and cutting down the growth that isn’t supposed to be in our “landscaped” ridge. I put that in quotation marks because it’s really out of control. Blackberry vines are growing over the tops of our planted plants, and I can’t get to a lot of it to remove it because it’s too far up the ridge. For example, here are the banks of rhododendrons on the left side of the ridge, which is still relative clear and which I removed a lot of extra growth from.

Rhododendrons on the left side of the garden

Now here is the right side of the garden, which admittedly doesn’t get as much sunshine so is probably not as far along. You can see a couple small clumps of red that usually are the red rhododendrons that are just as full as the ones on the left. I don’t know if they can get out from under the blackberry or not, and they are farther up the ridge, so unless I can get some help up there, I won’t be able to clear it out (or maybe I can get some of it from the top).

The little specks of red in the middle are supposed to be banks of red rhododendrons like the other ones, but they are covered in blackberry and other types of growth.

Other than our exciting animal sighting, nothing much out of the ordinary went on last week except my great niece’s birthday party. This year it was a small family get-together over presents, cake, and ice cream. It seems that she is now into collecting vinyl, so some of her gifts were a nice record player and some vintage albums. I bought a little suitcase record player a few years ago, but the quality was not good. We still have our stereo components but no amp. In Austin we were still set up to play our records using the amp from our CD player, but here we are not.

I did not attend my Thursday exercise class, although I went both Tuesdays, because Maja wasn’t going and I wanted to work outside in the morning before it got too hot. However, on Saturday, I awakened with a sinus headache, so I didn’t go to tai chi, either.

And that’s about it for this week.