Nature Woman Not so Much?

I love my yard. Can you tell from my pictures? You know we have some critters eating our avocadoes, and we thought they were cute (relatively cute) raccoons, but today when I was picking up leaves from our neighbor's HUGE magnolia tree I came across something furry under one of the plants and I ran screaming. Of course the door was locked (I came thru the door on the other side of the sunroom and was too scared to go back that way and go by the creature) and of course Will, who had been in the sunroom only moments earlier, was gone. Probably where all good men go, to the bathroom. He came back an hour later (OK, it was probably under a minute, but seemed like an hour) and looked closer (men ARE braver) and said it was not only a possum (or is it oppossum) , but it was clearly dead. While raccoons can be cute, possums are disgusting, and dead possums are the most disgusting. Luckily it is only 4 pm so I called the city and got the shelter and they transferred me to Animal Control and they are sending someone out. So if I ever said anything about our city being incompetant, I take it back. They rock! Euuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.

Sure makes the cats look EVEN cuter. (Had to sneak in a cat picture for contrast). Mowry is hiding and sleeping under the bedroom curtains!

Money doesn't grow on trees.....

... but fruit does! A close up of the plums on our tree!









This rose bush is out of control! I trim it so it isn't above the party fence separating us from our neighbors and it grows back an hour later (or so it seems).

Sometimes this blog can be so difficult. Posting pictures can be a pain, unless you don't care where the pictures go! I even deleted verbage and it still appeared. I've deleted all and now I've started over.

The tree in the picture is an avocado tree. We have two, but this is the only one that produces avocadoes. Notice the two avocadoes that have been chewed on by critters that we think are raccoons. We find at least two on the ground each day. I can't tell if they remain on the tree until the wind blows them down, or if they fall down as soon as the critters chew them. Probably both.


When we first moved here we had around 5 grocery bags full of avocadoes to share with friends and neighbors. Come to think of it, no one told us how good (or bad) the avocadoes were, so we don't know their fate, but we pick a few each week, put them in a brown paper bag until the ripen and eat them! They aren't the dark skinned Haas avocadoes, but they come from our tree and are good with other things!









I got some knitting done on my third pair of socks - they are looking to be the nicest! I love the color and texture.

Nothing Much

Not much is going on. I need to get one more skein from Michael's to finish my secret project, but the Michael's in Fremont doesn't carry the yarn -- only the store in Union City (a few miles north but in a poorly-planned shopping center with bad parking - the kind that you can't walk around, you have to drive from lot to lot because they aren't pedestrian friendly) and in Milpitas ( a few more miles south, and now that I dropped a client near there I try my best not to drive that way).

Pictures are always fun. Isn't Mowry cute giving himself a bath?

It's hard to see the plums on the tree, but there are zillions. The green dots are all plums! A large branch broke and we had hundreds of unripe plums fall to the ground that we had to pick up and put in our green recycle bin, but we had hundreds more that remained on the tree to ripen! We've picked a few and eaten them and they are sweet!

This is all still a thrill for a city gal brought up in L.A. OK, West L.A., but a city nonetheless. No farms near where I lived!

The close up picture is our our apple tree! The prior owners' son said something about them not being good because they sprayed too late, but in our house we do not use poisons, so no spray! We'll see what happens, but look at all those apples!

Since this is our first year in this house, everything that comes up in the front and back yards that isn't obvious is a surprise! We have one beautiful orange gladiola! My favorite is still the lavender plant, but it's also the favorite of all the bees in the neighborhood. Another favorite (can you have two favorites?) is the avocado tree. But that is the favorite of the raccoons! We haven't seen raccoons in our yard, but we saw them running across the street two blocks away. A neighbor saw oppossums in his yard, so it could be those ugly things. Every day we find at least one avocado on the ground with teeth marks in it. I should take a picture of an animal-got-there-first avocado!

Saturdays, Knitting, Estate Sales and other things

This was the week of deals. Our new house that was built in 1955 doesn't have a dishwasher. Doing dishes isn't bad, we both share it, although Will does most of it, but the dishes just don't always come out as clean as they do with a dishwasher. We talked about getting a portable dishwasher and decided not to, but we went to an estate sale on Friday after the workday was over and there was one there in EXCELLENT condition marked $45. We looked at it and the guy working the sale said "you have to take it for $30. We just used it to wash the dishes here - it works!" How could we resist. It's a little bigger than we thought it was, so it makes our eating area a little cramped looking, but it's perfect for us! The yellow towel on the avocado green stove is one I knitted. It's cotton and quite nice. Decoration only, I think!

The bottom horizontal black frame that holds 5 4x6 pictures was from a garage sale. The picture is blurry on purpose - this is a public blog and I didn't want our family pictures on display! It works well in a hallway grouping of old and current family photos.




Then I responded to an ad in the free section of Craigslist at http://www.craigslist.com/ to someone giving away a treadmill. A working treadmill! 200 people responded but he did some lottery, and I won! It was his girlfriend's from a long time ago, kept in a storage unit, not much use! He was giving away tons of stuff. Yes, it's folded up, but I WILL use it. My Aunt had offered us her treadmill, but then my friend gave me hers, which I used for awhile, but it didn't fold up, and wasn't working that well. Will sets up his Nordic Trac nex to this and we exercise together in the sunroom . At some point we should switch and then do the other one, but we haven't done that yet.

I couldn't decide what to knit next. I was thinking about what to make next, and as you can see from the picture on the right, I do not need any more blankets! So I decided on another pair of socks for now! I had the yarn, and it's portable and soon I'll be a pro at knitting socks! The picture against the purple background is more true to the color of the yarn.

Monday

Mondays are always difficult - a change from the weekend of "me" or "us" time to work time, even if weekends mean chores like housework and yardwork, or errands such as shopping or anything else.

Sunday we volunteered again for the Niles Canyon Railway and it was VERY BUSY because the weather was beautiful, it was Fathers' Day, and two cars were not working so they were short, and even had to turn away people from the first train. We worked hard - last time I had down time (time to knit) between trains, but not this time! It was fun and busy!

I started a cotton towel to hang in the kitchen, but the cotton yarn is hard to knit with and hurts my hurt "trigger finger" so I'm hurrying to finish it, which of course, hurts my finger more. I found some 8.5 skeins of one ounce (185 yards each) lovely old green wool at a garage sale for $1 that a grandma had for a project she never worked on. What's that like?! I'll have to take a picture and decide what to use it for.

Now it's Monday morning and that means work. I'm a consultant. I haven't been an employee since July 15, 1999 when I started my consulting business, but I still go to an office most of the time, and dare I say clients are not created equal. Today is my last day at a client, and I am very extremely happy about that. Did I mention how happy I am to be done at this client? I recommended that they hire an employee because they were needing more time than I could provide since I have more than one client. I gave them four weeks notice, but I'm sure it will be a scrabble today, but after today I will be a happy camper and will try to forget this one. When we were doing our house purchase and sale I was always at this company, so I used to call them "the lucky company" but they soon because something else and it was time to move on. Tomorrow I have a meeting with a prospective client whose needs sound much more managable and suitable. Some clients pay for my expertise and take advantage of it by asking my advice, and even heeding it, but others think a stock administration consultant with over 2o years of experience is a data entry clerk, and there's not much I can do.

I love people who say they would still work if they won the Lotto. I don't generally play Lotto, for no particular reason other than I don't even think of it since a buck for a fantasy is pretty cheap, and what if I DID win? But I digress. To quote a former boss I had many years ago, if I won lotto, "I'd be outta here so fast, the wind would knock you over". But I work because I love our house, and we have to have pay for kibble for our "kits" below. Do you know how hard it is to capture a picture (make that a decent picture) of all 3 cats at one time? Small, Medium and LARGE: Small is Mowry the orange male (1 year old, still thinks he's a kitten, sweet sweet love of a cat who is making the transition from adorable cuddly kitten to cat), Cinders on the left (female, kinda bitchy at times, matted because she won't let us brush her regularly, can be sweet, OLD, doesn't like Mowy), and BIG Maine Coon mix Alex (weighs 17.5 lbs at last weigh-in, is beautiful with magnificent fur that guests will never see because he hides whenever someone comes over and doesn't come out until they are safely gone, was an impulse "buy" at a Furry Friends Rescue http://www.furryfriendsrescue.org/ adoption about 6.5 years ago, never uses his teeth or claws on us UNLESS we are holding him to show guests).

What to knit next?

I'm making a wedding present for my niece, and I'm almost done (shhh, don't tell her, it's a surprise). In between I knitted the wrist warmers (easy ones with no fingers or thumbs pictured on an earlier post) so I just went to the local neighborhood knitting store for inspiration and ideas. She had a cute felted hat on display that I'm considering. How can I think about this during our Northern California heatwave, you ask? It's OK as long as I find a cool place to knit and I'm not holding a big blanket on my lap. Last year I made Aunt Mary a throw for her birthday and worked on much of it in the heatwave, but what can you about the weather?

I'm thinking of trying to knit the hat below. The lady at the knit store and I talked about the hat she had displayed that is much like this one pictured. She has limited colors but beautiful yarn for this. I'll read the instructions (or recipe as I like to call it) at http://webhome.idirect.com/~quanah/patfelthat.html where I found this and see what it says.



I was thinking of a felted cat bed, but we have many cat beds so I don't need one right now. Mowry and Alex were sleeping in the cat bed below when I woke them with the camera flash.

Monday

Can you believe the size of this tomato plant on the left? The tomatoes are splitting so I need to find out what I'm doing wrong. It started out about 5 inches tall. It's an heirloom, but I don't remember which kind! I bought it from someone who was raising funds for the Avon Breast Cancer Walk, and I've asked her what I'm doing wrong, so we'll see what she says, but a friend told me I'm watering too much or too little, so I have to monitor that.


It's Monday and I'd rather be knitting than getting ready to take the bus across the bay to a client's office, but I get paid to work and not to knit, and from what I've seen on the knitlist blog, it wouldn't pay enough to get paid to knit. Isn't that always the case with hobbies?

It was a lovely weekend with great weather. We volunteered in town at the Golden Spike - the Niles Canyon Railway. I got a great post - at the boarding area so when a train was there I was busy, but in between I could sit in the shade and knit. Will got to be on the main street, and although he got to see some inconsiderate slob dangerous drivers (like the one he told me about who turned right in front of pedestrians), the people he talked to were great!

I knitted a wrist warmer for winter. It's EASY (just a triangle of K1 P1 sewed together with a space left unsewed in the seam for my thumb). Not as nice as the fingerless gloves my friend makes, but much easier. No counting, no markers. I hope my fingers stay warm enough, but this IS California! This yarn was left over from the sleeveless shell I made. At this rate of fast knitting, I can make several of these for myself and for gifts, but first I need to make one for the other hand!

More knitting and things

Mowry and Alex like each other! Mowry blends into the floor. He can be a hazard if we don't look down when walking! Alex is magnificent! A maine coon mix - he's LARGE, furry, beautiful and scared of everyone, sometimes including us!

This is Mowry sitting on an afghan that I crocheted MANY years ago. Here's an old picture of me with my family. That's me in the center, my sister (with the glasses) my parents, my Aunt Mary (for whom this blog is named!), Uncle Sol, cousins Alan and Barbara. I don't remember what occasion this was from, but I look about 9 years old?

I've been working on a project that's a wedding present for my niece, so I can't show pictures, although I don't think she even knows about this blog. I'm also working on hand warmers (like gloves without the fingers. I'm on row three, so no pics yet. It's the same yarn leftover from the shell in an earlier post.

Tomorrow we are volunteering for the Golden Spike - the Niles Canyon Railway comes thru Niles Canyon and drops people off and picks them up in our great little town. We help people figure out where to catch the train, where to eat lunch, etc. http://www.niles.org/

It's time for dinner! I'll try to update this more often!