Jungle Tub - Sunday 3/1/2009

Every fall I bring all the succulents in from the front porch to the warmth and safety of our master bathroom. They love it. Sometimes they go a little kookoo.


I love succulents because they are so freaky and other worldly. This bloom is about a foot high, and springs from a plant that looks like a giant hen & chickens.


The bottom of the bloom. I've had this thing for 8 years--given to me by Saharazad, and this is the first time it's bloomed.


Blossoms on another succulent. Braveheart gave me this one.


The base for the bloom above. Sweet, huh?

Lovely specimen.


Oh, and yes, there's fauna in the jungle too.

Playful upsidedown fauna, even.

Wreathiness - Saturday 12/20/2008

Ooh! Hearth and Lights sent us a beautiful L.L. Bean wreath for Christmas. It dresses up our gate nicely.

These two stood up with us at our wedding, and in the past couple of years we've attended their sons' weddings. It's good to have old friends, even if you live 2,000 miles apart. (sniffle.)

Decorations and the Economy - Saturday 12/13/2008

The skiing bear makes another appearance, but we are slowly replacing regular lights with LEDs.


Yeah, yeah. It's a manufactured home, as we like to call it.

In just two days, we'll have lived here for eight years. And you know what? When they offered to loan us half again what this house cost, we said no. We wanted to be in a position where either one of us could cover the payment on this house and land if the other should not be able to work.

We could have taken more money and struggled. We could have opted for some kooky balloon payment scheme. But we're not gamblers. I really don't understand how people can have deluded themselves into home loans for houses they just couldn't afford.

So what do you think?

In another 10 years, when we send in the last payment, should we put up a sign that says: "Don't laugh. It's paid for." ?

Happy HouseDay! - Tuesday 12/3/2008

I took this two years ago. It's the stairs leading to the back deck at my Mom's house. This is where I grew up. (Though admittedly, it was a concrete patio when I lived there.)

Today is the house's 48th birthday! It's the day my family moved in, about six weeks before I was born. (Did I make the math easy enough for you?)

My parents designed and built it themselves. I really like the way Mom laid out the kitchen, with a built in oven and a stove top built into the counter that divides the working kitchen from the dining area.

Also very cool: There's a secret passageway! One pair of closets was never sealed off in between, so you can crawl through over the shoes and under the hanging clothes.

You're not supposed to. But you can. Trust me, this will win you major points with young friends.

Today's the day we start celebrating Christmas. Used to be with an ornament or a special favorite food next to your plate at dinner on December 3rd. My favorite was my own jar of maraschino cherries and the little glass bird ornaments that clipped onto the branches and had a little spray of stiff plastic threads for tails. (Cooler than I am describing, honestly.)

Happy Birthday, House!

Now We're Cookin' - Wednesday 11/26/2008

I worked from home today to avoid the pre-holiday drive time traffic. I love getting up, making a pot of tea, and going to work on the other end of the house.

Clients were typically demanding as the people they work with put pressure upon them to tie things up before the long holiday. But I was mentally prepared for it, and I didn't have a commute behind me or ahead of me.

On my lunch break I made hot artichoke dip and tried a new recipe for cranberry sauce. It sounds unbelievable, but here it is:

Brandied Cranberry Sauce

16 oz. cranberries
2 cups sugar (I might do a half cup less next time, I adjusted for 12 oz. of berries)
1/3 cup brandy (I forgot to reduce the amount)

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

Rinse cranberries. Place them in a cooking vessel. Add the sugar. Cover, and put in the oven for an hour. (No additional liquid, just the water from rinsing.)

When you take the cranberries out of the oven, pour the brandy over the top. Stir or don't...I saw recipes that advised both methods. I poured them from Pyrex to this serving dish and then added the brandy, which mostly evaporated.

Hyrda's Big Project

We started breaking up the branches and twigs in the back yard Friday night (from the downed tree) and filled a big trash container and six or seven big bags.

I sawed up some of the medium branches that evening. Today Hydra bought a chain saw and got to work on the bigger branches.


Wow, what a lot of work! That's a 4 pound hammer. I tried splitting one log and it was about all I could do to get through it.

Gonna get the IcyHot ready!

Kitty and I were shopping in Palmdale all afternoon. We were tired too.

A Mighty Wind

It sounded like someone was throwing gravel at our bedroom all night. In the morning, there were branches down and the tomatoes were knocked over.

Well, the wind wasn't done with us.


After several big windy slams, the whole house shook...and our big shade tree broke and the top half fell on the house!






Hydra had the day off. Not so much after all. He spent most of the day on the roof, cutting up branches. The ladder kept being blown down, so he was at my mercy.



Now both the back yard and the front yard are full of branches and we're down our best shade tree. Sigh.

How Clean Was My Cupboard?

I was in the midst of reorganizing my kitchen cabinets when Dodger went missing. Where could he be?

Turns out, he'd claimed this one as his own. He's swinging his head back and forth in full on defensive mode.

I meant to take a photo of this cabinet post-reorg, but haven't gotten around to it. It's so much less cluttered now.

Oh, and the parrot infestation has been taken care of.

Finally!

It's been hot hot hot for far too long.

This morning we finally had some cool weather and clouds. Even a little smattering of rain.

I love the way the clouds play hide and seek around the mountains across the valley.

Odd Job Seeker - Wednesday 7/23/2008

Because our little town goes through growth spurts every so often, you see a lot of these group mailboxes around. It saves the post office sending someone around to each and every house in our 154-house complex.

People post notices on the mailboxes. Usually advertisements for the Homeowners' Association meetings or for Bingo night at the club house. (Yes, I'm serious.)

The middle one, hoping for the return of a darling lost cat has been there the longest. I hope they find her. Odds are not good out here in coyote country.

The top one gave me a laugh because I misread it as "Lost Bed" when I first saw it. I'm thinking how the heck do you lose a bed!?

Ah...loft bed. I see!



This one showed up yesterday. It made me smile for so many reasons.

Peak Hike and Beyond - Sunday 7/6/2008

It was 48 degrees on the front porch when we started off on our hike at 5:55 a.m. Our house is probably in the clump of trees behind my head.

Straight out of bed and onto the trail. Gorgeous.


First peak. This is after a long steady slog up the back side of our neighborhood, which is cupped in a horseshoe of old volcanic cones.

Yeah, I'm feeling confident about saying that after really thinking about the rocks we see up there, which include quartz intrusions, etc.

Hydra and I agree that we would have been up on top of this hill playing around these rocks. They're a perfect miniature of a large formation. He would have played with his military figures. I would have trotted horses around through the little canyons.


Hydra demonstrates the usefulness of a walking stick on a steep slope. I always have this camera in my hand, or I might use one too.


Green fruit of the yucca. I don't think I've ever seen it at this stage before. Maybe because it's right after rattlesnake baby season and we avoid the hills a bit at this time.



Looking down upon the 14 as it winds its way toward Santa Clarita where it ends about 20 miles away, at the 5 .

Atop another peak, looking down over the large burg of Acton. Downtown is just to the right of arc of two curving lines that mark the railroad track and Soledad Canyon Road.


Massive mansion that is right below the peak I took the last shot from. Rumored to have been built by a prominent musician, it went up for sale for $5 million within about six months of completion. The real estate listing said it has an indoor pool with a swim-up bar and a music studio inside.

There are no windows on the top floor! Are those high ceilings or what?


An abandoned trailer high on a hillside. The view is great from here.


I love poking around abandoned places. Hydra pointed out that something dramatic must have happened here. There are still mugs sitting upside down on a towel next to the sink.


It's hard to say how long this has been here or when it was abandoned. The license plate is of the black and gold style that was used in the sixties. The place has been empty so long that the power lines have fallen from the poles leading to it, and haven't been fixed.

There were lots of paperbacks around the bed and some more stacked in the main room. There were chairs on the deck and a grill. Someone must have loved it up here.




See the little critter trail we followed around the side of Sundry's Mountain? This is a flat version of it. There's also the type that is barely cut into the steep side of a slope, and we spent a lot of time on those too.


Comin' around the mountain (Sundry's.) That's Hydra's Mountain we're headed toward. He picked it before we climbed either of them, and thought it was the highest.

Ha! When you stand on Sundry's Mountain--which we don't very often because it is a bear to get down off of--we look down upon the pretender. Then again, we discovered that we gave the tallest peak to our friend Trueness when he was here a few years ago. Harumph.

Anyway, that green is part of the 154 homes that make up our neighborhood.


Just as we arrived back on our Homeowner's Association land, down by the RV storage area where our trailer lives, this strange contraption came flying by. It was circling Acton Valley. Looks like fun.


It really is an oasis. Our house is up the road to the right.



But we didn't take the easy route. This is known as the home stretch. The tall narrow pair of trees (that look like one) sticking up on the left are at the end of our front porch.


Aaah! Shade and Gatorade after two hours of hiking and exploring. Dodger has been wanting to "go outside" all weekend, so finally he had his chance.

He's sharing the Gatorade even though he didn't hike.

Working from Home - Thursday 6/12/2008

Nice to be home to catch the sunlight coming in through the kitchen window. I avoided the commute today. I get good gas mileage in my Toyota Echo, but my commute still burns about 2 gallons a day.

And you know what that means lately.



After working eight hours, I used the extra time to run a couple of errands in Palmdale before going to a Pilates Pulse class at the gym. (Whew! Tough!)

Then I got creative with the shrimp Hydra cooked up. Penne with shrimp, asparagus, wilted red lettuce, really good olive oil (thanks to Tomasina), Parmesan cheese and spices. Mmmm.

Dandelion Greens - Thursday 6/5/2008

I'd like to say that the odd qualities of light in this photo were caused by some effort on my part... or at least to the haze of nostalgia lingering around this skillet full of dandelion greens. But honestly, it's hard to take good food photos. I don't know why there's a weird glow there.

I couldn’t bring myself to make them with bacon, which is the real way to make them. So I wilted them in a cast iron skillet with some olive oil and garlic.

It was just enough to make me homesick for the dandelion greens we used to pick when they were young and tender around the old church down the road that was used as a barn when I was a kid. We’d never pick them longer than about the length of our hands (kid hands!)

They’re selling these huge 12-inch leaves that are mostly tough bitter stem. Sigh. What I wouldn’t give for some good greens.

Or the flowers! We used to pick the flowers, soak them briefly in salt water (de-bugging them), and then dip them in egg and flour and saute them in butter. Nutty and fabulous. The little buds are great, too.

Please, if you have access to unpoisoned dandelions, try this!

In Flight Photos - Monday 1/28/2008

I got a whole kick out of taking photos as we came into the L.A. area. I saw the reservoir along the 14 outside Palmdale and was all prepped to try to get an overhead photo of our house, but there were clouds for the next few miles. This is over the development in Santa Clarita.


See that line in the middle!? That's where the L.A. Aquaduct comes down out of the mountains and pours into the reservoir along the 5 near where the 14 begins.



Lookit! The shadow of our plane!


Yeah , you're right. I'm a dork.



Very artsy shot of Dodger trying to avoid the flash. He was so glad to see me.

He sat on my bent knee and gazed at me adoringly for the first hour or more. After a while he was willing to turn around and watch the PBS special Parrots in the Land of Oz.

The Tee Shirt Project - Part Two - Sunday 12/2/2007

Isn't this cheery? I'm not letting go of this one yet. It's one of my favorites to do yard work in. Given to me by a coworker/friend shortly after we brought Dodger home. Of course, he's a much more somberly colored bird, but his spirit is definitely this bright.


Mona! Hydra gave me this tee shirt a few years ago. I love Mona because she is at once high art and high kitch. I have a Mona Lisa soap dispenser, a Mona Lisa salt & pepper set, etc.


From the first year Hydra and I particpated in the Revlon Run/Walk for women's cancers. At the time we were supporting DeeKay and remembering Hydra's mother. By the next year I'd be walking for Gia. This coming May, sadly, we'll have more names to add to our support list.

It was very emotional walking into the L.A. Memorial Coliseum for the first time. Being serenaded byJapanese drummers into the tunnel and then emerging onto the playing field, which has been in use since 1923.




From The Museum of Jurassic Technology, a truly odd museum on the west side of Los Angeles. I think I have to go back as I'm still not entirely sure what happened to me there. Worth a look if you are interested in unique experiences.



Yeah, I have a tee shirt from my new home town, Acton. This is how the town likes to see itself. I like it too.

This project suggests many more projects! The Mug Project. The Matchbook Project.

Stay tuned, Clutterbusters!