C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 89

Got the car inspected…

In Oklahoma most any gas station can do it.

In Washington, in Spokane, there are 2 state-run inspection operations, and the addy listed on the internet is wrong…it lists it as 930 N Hamilton, but that’s Gonzaga U. It’s actually hidden by the buildings on the other side, and is on Cataldo. I found a very nice construction guy who showed me where it was.

I wrote WSDOT a nice note about their addressing…

At least, however, we don’t have any problems: passed.

I’m taking the faithful Forester for a general mechanical service and oil change on Thursday: here’s hoping there’s nothing wrong, but I’ve heard just a little thump in the transmission: Subarus get this as they age, and some can get very rackety and keep going. But if it’s solveable by oil, I’d like it solved. This car is in real good condition otherwise, at about 120,000 miles, and we’re soon going to put another 4000 on it. Just being sure. In all its career, since we got it in 2003, I think the only spendy bill besides tires has been replacing the timing chain at about 105,000 miles, which was more just recommended. No mechanicals, no fuss, no broken bits.

I think we’re apt to get another Subaru when we have to get a car, unless the Prius impresses us mightily. We’re comfy with the Subaru, and we have had zero issues with the two we’ve owned. Turns on a dime, all-wheel drive, moonroof, heated seats, gets 25 city and 28 highway…and carries quite a bit of cargo: got an entire patio set into the rear, plus umbrella. Not to mention hauling all that rock.

I think I was dehydrated…not senile…

I have a bad habit of not drinking water.

Yesterday, within a matter of hours I…

…decided to make coffee, removed and dumped the grounds basket, left the holder in place above the tank (it’s a lever-pour tank system: Cuisinart)—

…poured in water. Check.

…poured in grounds…check.

…pushed start button. Check.

Halfway through, I draw off some coffee. No color to it.

I investigate. I’d forgotten to put the basket back in. Where had I put the new coffee? Oh. Into the holder. The water has now washed the coffee into the tank. I stop the brewing, refill the water to top, remove and wash the tank and holder, refill the grounds basket and drop it into the machine. I push start.

I then notice the holder sitting on the counter. Where is the grounds basket with the new coffee? Fallen through to the bottom of the tank.

Revising it all again—I finally brew coffee.

I go down to do something useful. I realize the sump for the marine tank is down. I refill the topoff reservoir, which kicks up the calcium powder in there, but no sweat…no need to unplug the topoff: it’s weak stuff.

I go upstairs to enjoy a cup of coffee, then notice the tank upstairs is totally white.

I’d forgotten I’d added 2 pounds of new calcium powder to that reservoir. And I’d just kicked it up, with the topoff running to put an inch of water into the system.

Jane, who is worried about my sanity, asked why the tank was white, and we concluded a water change would be a good idea. So we fineagled that, and got clean water in, which makes it less cloudy. But this is my pristine, just-set-up, ultimate dream tank, and I just coated everything in it white and spiked the ph. Wah! At least of all the accidents you can have with a marine tank, while this is disgusting, it’s not fatal, and the tank autocorrects eventually. If I could FIND my ph meter I could fix this—but, y’know, the system equilibrates well on its own, and am I going to improve the situation? No. So I have a crappy look on all the rock, sand and corals, and the clam’s miffed, but hey, everything’s alive.

I did venture to take the makeshift machete to the iris that need trimming for transport, and didn’t cut off any fingers, so I’m functioning better.

Last night I realized I was terribly thirsty for Coke, of all things, which says a) I’m overheated, which is never good—I’d gotten too much sun, and too little liquid; and b) I was dehydrated, which can equal stupid. By the time I’d taken down half a liter of diet cola with ice melt, I was cooled off and capable of function…so I think that was a big part of it. Yep, I know, water is better, but I can’t drink water without flavoring without muscle spasms (don’t ask: it’s from infancy), and ultimately, under a tablespoon of diet cola syrup, it’s water.

I am, however, down a pound.

We’re being lazy today—-we’re kind of tired, a little sore…

…and we did get the real ‘emergency’ things done. Though I do see Jane patrolling the garden out there, possibly with work in mind.

Naw. She’s dressed in a clean new shirt, which is not what you do to go wrestle the garden.

I do need to get out there and wash the pond filter.

Mostly now it’s watering.

We’ve been trying to figure how to get water to the ‘back 40′, ie, the ‘ell’ by the garage, which is not on the sprinkling system. And we looked at a) the possibility of using an unused zone in the control box by figuring out how to wire in and plumb in another valve for what looks like a fully used manifold [metal thingie that has a lot of connectors to let you put daughter valves all on the same mother line]—and we can’t tell one wire from the other: no wiring diagram b) installing a new control box and valve manifold, for just one line (kind of overkill)…

In everything it’s the frustration of having water on one side of the yard and power on the other: getting the two together constructively has just been a bear.

Then we realized that the #6 line in the control box actually WAS used, but for a section of sprinkler between us and the neighbors that we cut off when we coated the area in deep mulch, no plants.

Ha! We tie onto THAT line, run it clear out to the ell, install a couple of meaningful sprinkler heads, reactivate zone 6 on the control box with the flip of a switch, and we’re in it for an easy DIY with a mattock, a coil of irrigation hose, four hose barbs and some hard pipe where we insert the two sprinkling heads out in that ell, and we’re good. We’re also not having to dip into savings to get that area irrigated so we don’t spend our time hauling hose out to the apple tree and dogwood. Yay us.

On a somewhat lazy day, on a diet, hey, it’s only imagination…what’s your favorite breakfast?

Mine: blueberry waffles with pecans and maple syrup, a side and endless supply of crispy pepper bacon, an endless supply of orange juice, and a bottomless pot of coffee…

And a happy Father’s Day to all you who are fathers—or the sons and daughters of same.

The day before Father’s Day…Jane sent me to Costco and Lowe’s… [sob]

She’d forgotten. I had an apprehension it might be gruesome.

It was gruesome.

It was shopping cart gridlock near the free food handouts, which were in the main aisles.

I got the requisite broccoli, succumbed to a food sample [smoked salmon and jalapeno cheese: I got some] and headed for the Nitrile Exam gloves…

All went well. Until I lost my credit card and receipt on the way between the register and the door. Someone did see my credit card fall, and gave me that, but then I had to go get the checkout person to prove I’d paid for the stuff. 4 bags of broccoli. Gimme a break. I’m stealing four bags of broccoli, a packet of smoked salmon and a quarter round of cheese?

Then Costco. Scored the short hose, but the kid at checkout in the garden dept didn’t know that cow manure and steer manure were operationally equivalent in the garden. Then he sent me outside to load the steer manure. But no compost. I went back in, about equivalent to facing the Greenbay Packers in the doorway, a tide of shoppers with geraniums and rocking chairs (a special, I gather)—and I got to where the compost might.

The bags are waterlogged and weigh like juvenile sin. I got them onto the cart, and FINALLY one of the loaders showed up and asked if he could help. Oh, yes, indeedy, I don’t fancy slinging those leak-prone bags UP into the car bed with the broccoli…

Holidays at either of these two stores are nowhere I want to be in the near future…

Good company…for trees…

Fast-Growing Tree, online, just delivered us, via truck, two well-grown, healthy trees, each about 4′ high, and cleverly packed. Jane was somewhat lamenting having ordered the Japanese maple, which was pricey, when some 20.00 maples came it at Lowes. OTOH, this tree has two-three years growth on that sprig, and has been treated for fungus, plus comes with a treatment; and we are adding broccoli to the soil…we’re determined to keep this tree.

The mysterious other order was a pink dogwood. Love it.

Jane has now decided she is going to dig the lotus pond to plant the pink dogwood in the thrown-up berm from that.

I am assigned to go to Costco and get broccoli and to Lowes to get steer manure. Joy! But it’s easier than digging…

Today’s menu…the gooseberry bush is toast….

I lopped its branches. I have yet to get the weedeater out, but I will. I recovered the Green Monster after the garbage crews had been by and filled it with iris leaves…yep, that’s one of the BIG rolling city cans, filled, and so heavy I can no longer find the strength to horse it across the sidewalk and the water hoses lying there. I topped it off with various mounds of hemlock cones from about the front garden. And declared I’d had my exercise for the day.

Jane has been rebuilding the backside of the waterfall, which includes massive pieces of basalt terracing, basalt gravel fill, then some dirt, then plants. We had to get in there last year because we had a leak, and we decided to fix it more nicely and bury the drain hose while we were at it.

We are both tired.

I went to Freddy Myers’ (discount store) to pick up a prescription, which turned into a monster shopping mission and though the lens for my glasses is here, I didn’t have the wind left after Freddy Myers to go to Walmart and fuss through the repair job…I’m tired. Jane’s tired. I needed my Aleve, which I’d forgotten.

We have gravel…

A huge truck showed up today and, by invitation, drove over a gooseberry bush to deliver a full load of basalt chips to our driveway. Now the fun begins.

We were smart enough to get a nice little Black & Decker compressor for our wheelbarrow tires: we have 2 wheelbarrows, and if you’ve pushed a wheelbarrow, you know that nice hard tires make a much easier job, particularly over new-laid gravel.

We’re going to deepen the gravel layer throughout the gardens, front and back, improve the graveling of paths that lead to seats on the pondside, we’re preparing for Patty and Mike to deliver us a load of basalt rocks to complete edgings where we’ve had only small round rocks…or no-rock.

Shoveling gravel is hard work. Pushing a gravel-loaded wheelbarrow even with fully inflated tires is a pita, and almost beyond what I can push…I hate this age thing! Raking it is not quite as bad, but we are going to have a fine old time when we get down to converting the stub of that pile to a deepened layer of gravel for the driveway.

I am, I may say, tired. I have machete’d iris clumps into storable and transportable form; I have guided a dump truck; I have shoveled rock; I have trekked into the wilds of the basement to get the compressor and returned it after inflating two tires. (The compressor is neat, and pretty cheap, for what it does.)

We are going to get the garden rockwork done, plant a few trees (Jane’s still plugging away out there) and move a few others. I have to root up a forsythia, which has never thrived, to make way for a tool shed, and whack down the gooseberry—I did invite the driver to make a few more passes over it, but he declined. At least we didn’t knock any more branches off the hemlock (the truck drivers have had a vendetta against that poor tree.)

So…now we just slog along, moving a certain amount of the pile daily and placing it where it needs to go.

Jane’s out there removing the Harry Lauder’s Walking Stick, which has never done well, and moving a Hinoki dwarf pine to the spot, before also removing an Austrian pine we don’t know where to put, and replacing it with a chocolate mimosa. I should never turn Jane loose in Lowe’s nursery department. We have a green laceleaf Japanese Maple coming in to replace the one that died of verticillum wilt (we have liberally treated the ground with broccoli, which horticulturalists swear is the thing to do, and we are hoping for the best. Jane also ordered something else in the way of trees, but cannot remember what she ordered. I fear it is a crabapple, or, worse, a chocolate mimosa. But there is nothing about our landscape that is not moveable…

I would, however, love about a dozen minions, ebul or lawful gud is immaterial…

Now you get to see what’s been keeping us going the last while…

Jane’s been working on the editing, then the covers…and now you get to see it…

It’s been one of those things that’s been a long, long piece of work, long hours of headwork and concentration…I put food out, try to convince Jane to take a break to the garden for lunch…most times it’s been a go…

And the cats have become convinced that 5 am is an acceptable wake-up time…and they’re working on 4:30…

But it’s done! All but the formatting. And the new covers are up on Jane’s site…

And I wouldn’t be surprised but what she tries to convince Shu that she SHOULD get to sleep in tomorrow…

Go over to her site and have a look.

Somebody actually got a good shot of a supercell…

scroll down a bit

This is what you see when they form way too close to you. Jane and I got this view from our back porch…and when I talk about the ‘curtains’ or ‘skirts’ of a tornado going over the house, when those things decide to move, the speed is so great you can’t get from the back door to the front door before the ‘skirts’ pass over you…a view I had once too often, figuring as one of the reasons for moving north. I was getting the feeling I’d begun to run out of tornado luck when they kept forming over us and blowing past…