Tag Archives: neighborhood

The good and the bad.

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One of the Feather Trees

I know we are instructed as Christians to give thanks in everything, but there are things that we can’t honestly give thanks for. I’ll start with one of those Bad events:

While my family was here, we had the unhappy discovery that the fairy house creations at the creek had been vandalized, and Ivy’s beautiful sign torn down. We could tell it wasn’t just city maintenance workers reducing the fire hazard or anything like that, because although the dry grass had been chopped down a lot, it wasn’t a thorough job. And there was graffiti on the far side of the creek, along with gnomes thrown into the stream and various items disappeared altogether. The fairy who had through many seasons hovered overhead by means of fishing line, was not to be seen.

My gnome before.

 

My granddaughter found her sign and hung it up in a less conspicuous place. Probably the presence of the sign had drawn the attention of the vandals to the opportunity to destroy something. We were both very sad about this, and angry. But I don’t think Ivy has given up; I won’t be surprised if the next time she is visiting down here I find myself collaborating on a rehabilitation of the fairy village.

In the meantime, on her recent visit, Ivy came bearing my own garden gnome, meticulously painted so that he is better than new.


Starting with the refurbished gnome, I have only Good things to report.

Near a different creek that runs through my neighborhood, is a lovely city park that is Ever Green with soccer fields and Coast Redwood trees. Pathfinder and I went there with his nephews on the way back from the grieved fairy house village, and the three of them threw a football to each other for a while. I walked around taking pictures of them and of the trees that have only grown more majestic over the 36 years since we first visited them a block from our house. What a blessing they are.

On my own property, my only dahlia has bloomed for the first time. After I had forgotten planting it and before I noticed it happening it was fully open, and startled me.

Decades ago I had quite a few dahlias, but there wasn’t really room for them, so I gave them away. For a recent birthday a friend gave me a dahlia tuber, which I’d first planted in a pot, where it barely survived. So I planted it in the front garden, where it is a Good.

And the final great Good for today is Queen Anne’s Lace, growing quite mysteriously and so welcome at the corner of my own driveway. Over the years several other species have volunteered themselves among the oenethera there, mostly arriving from the garden on the other side of the driveway. This is the first wildflower that has traveled all the way from the creek path. I can hardly believe my good fortune at the bestowal of this beloved plant. May it ever increase!

Gleanings from an evening walk.

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When Ivy and Jamie were here they got me back into the habit of an evening walk. Depending on how much time we had before dark, or how much energy remained for Grandma after the day’s events, we might just go to the bridge over the creek and back, ten minutes. Or we might do a half hour’s walk, farther on from there.

Wedged between twigs and the trunk of the live oak above, Ivy found a smooth and flattish oval rock. She brought it home and painted a frog on it, and placed it back where she’d found it. A day later it had been taken, so she next wrote a friendly note to the taker and managed to place it between the twigs. The note had been moved when I looked tonight, and now it’s likely to get blown down. She had leaned out precariously over the bridge to place her items in the first place, where I can’t reach, so I’m of no use in pursuing further written communications with other bridge-walkers.

Since the children went home, I’ve walked every evening by myself. Today dusk was early, because of it being a mostly cloudy day. No frogs were croaking in the creek, and few birds were to be heard. A towhee, the distant cawing of a crow, and few finches by the side of the path.

We’re coming into the season when the wild Himalayan blackberries get ripe, and they grow all along the creek and the path. Actually most of them never ripen, but this evening I found a few sweet and juicy ones  hiding in the back of a patch. One of them is in the photo, just before I plucked it. Dessert!

Along my street the neighbor’s bank of star jasmine is in full bloom, and it is exuding its heavy sweetness — too much for some people, and not a plant you want to have by your front door, because of the bees that will scare your guests. But it’s nice to catch a whiff when walking by.

Star Jasmine

And I passed the home of Deanna, whose door I bravely knocked on a couple of years ago to introduce myself and ask if I might have some of her dozens of summer squashes growing and becoming overgrown right by the sidewalk. She gladly gave me a few (already overgrown ones), but I never asked again. Last week I saw her outside when we were walking by, and she told me to come and pick from the current crop anytime. So tonight I did. I just twisted this little crookneck until it broke off.

These bike paths in my town that follow the course of the creeks typically back up to fenced back yards of neighborhoods on the other side. Growing through those fences are a great variety of not-so-wild plants: roses, trumpet vines, honeysuckle; for years branches of a fig tree hung over the path, from which I picked several figs, before it evidently got pruned back. Tonight I broke off a stem of honeysuckle to stick in my buttonhole, and breathed in its sweetness all the way home.

Rosemary and bees.

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By the time I got out for a walk today, the sun was shining. My neighbor’s rosemary bushes are in bloom — unlike mine which gets no morning sun in winter — and lots of bees were drinking their breakfast there. I seemed to soak up some of their energy just watching them for a minute.

As of this evening my neighbor who said he would cut up my Christmas tree seems to have forgotten. But this morning, as I continued past the rosemary, I greeted a third neighbor loading up her own green bin with prunings from a shade tree. She offered to come down with her chain saw to cut my tree, but I declined; then she suggested that I put the whole tree at the curb, where she thinks the garbage man will kindly pick it up. So I did that. Tomorrow will show the results of the experiment!

To the creek and back home.

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Four days in a row I’ve taken a walk along the creek path. During the two or three months previous, while I was working hard in the garden, traveling, or concentrating on other various things, I could not seem to do this most leisurely and beneficial thing for  myself. Well, I’m starting again. Autumn seems to be good for new beginnings, in my case.

The top photo shows you how green and grassy and leafy much of the creekside scenery is, but leaves are turning in a few places, such as on this grapevine coming through the fence from someone’s backyard:

And a few trees with yellow leaves are letting them fall now, too. Some are silver maples, I found that out from my Seek app.

When I get back to my place at the end of these walks, I now have several new plantings to look over as I go up the front walk, like the Swiss chard and other greens, which I’ve gotten smart and planted in the front yard, because that’s where all the sun is:

In the back garden I did get the new manzanita planted, and the succulents replaced around it. I cleaned up the pine needles that had been making a thicker and thicker blanket on the plants in that area, and finished just before dark, when it was not good lighting for a picture. The wind came that night and brought down more pine needles, which I have yet to clean up. So I’ll show you McMinn (my name for the new bush, a “Howard McMinn” subspecies) another time. Here is one of the darling new succulents that I added there. I did pull the needles off of that one.

The weather has been unusually warm even for California. It was 80 degrees yesterday. But rain is coming again and will cool things off. It remains to be seen whether I will venture forth in the rain the way I did last year. Every day’s a new day… Will I find new ways to keep good habits? Maybe, with God’s help.