Ten days ago I took the final photos of the house I originally built as my dream home. Events occur, life changes, new adventures await. Final photos taken from the patio, great room, and walkway to the barn of the house where I lived the last 13 years.
Now I am in The San Gabriel Valley in northeastern LA County house hunting. The trees here, the flowers, the succulents astonish. Purple jacaranda trees in full bloom line many streets. Yesterday evening while out strolling around the hotel grounds for some exercise, I saw the largest humming bird I have ever seen. I feel excited to start this new adventure.
This morning my house looked close to normal in spite of all the packing I had already done. I began with meditation, made coffee same as always, completed my yoga routine, ate some yogurt with walnuts. Normal ended there. I moved the car out of the garage, hiked to the gate and opened it, waited for the professional packers, figured it would take them two days. These two guys–twins probably in their 50s–are speedy. Even after getting lost and finally arriving close to ten and taking a lunch break, they have packed a lot of my life today.
Mom’s crystal, hand-painted dishes, Grandmother’s (whom I never knew) dishes, the silverware Dad gave mom on their first wedding anniversary, all the little painted china pieceds D’mitri made for me reside somewhere in these boxes.
These hold CDs and movies collected over a couple of decades, corn maiden Kachina dolls, a Navaho hoop dancer, Talavera pots, a Thai spirit house–so much of me.
I thought last night would be my last here, but I am staying tonight. All they have left to pack now are clothes, the TV, and this computer. They said they would leave this to last so I could still use it. It is a lovely evening looking down the canyon, a golden light hard to capture with an iPAD.
One of the hardest things to leave is D’mitri’s four year old handprints in the cement by the garage. He graduates from high school one year early on Friday. Yes, I will miss this beautiful setting, what I thought was my dream house, the canyon, the wildlife. Nevertheless, I am looking onward to new adventures in a new setting, making new friends, and seeing old ones more often whom I rarely see now.
One of my fellow elementary school students from decades ago posted a quote on Facebook, the topic of which is STUFF. The gist of this is that STUFF rarely makes your life better, usually costs money, fails to contribute to wonderful memories, and provides little in the way of happiness. The timeliness of this post really hit me. Where have I been lately? Certainly not doing much blogging. In addition to working full time, my recent endeavors focus on getting rid of STUFF as in took 35 pounds of paper documents to the shredder and there is more to come, hauled one load of clothes I no longer wear to the shop for Downtown Women’s Center and another load is stacked up on a desk, gave 20 books to the school library and some to the local bookstore, lined up glassware from flower bouquets sent to me to take to the florist on Tuesday on way home from work, and I just got started. More boxes remain to attack.
How did I acquire all this STUFF, and more importantly why did I keep some of it for decades? Perhaps easier to haul it around than to address the problem. Some of it was so old, it even shocked me why I still had it. Now that I am done for today getting rid of more STUFF, I am going to take a walk in the sunshine and admire the yellow wildflower carpet beautifying my land.
It has not reached a temperature above freezing for six days. One night it broke the low recored set in 1895. It dropped to minus 11. The old recored was minus 6. While a lot of the rest of Texas had no power, where I lived had only rotating short blackouts occasionally. At my house, there has been no outage. Not only has it been cold but also snowing. The last two says shout out winter beauty. The first few photos I took yesterday. Then it snowed another 3-4 inches and I took more photos this morning.
I took the above photo early this morning. The following photo was also taken this morning.
I live where weather extremes prevail. Yesterday it was nearly 70, today 60, and in a few days it will drop to 9, yes, 9, with a windchill way below zero. In the meantime, I dream of spring flowers, renewal, transformation. I scrolled through old flower photos and decided to share a few. Drink a glass of wine, dream spring dreams, dance.
Most 2020 goodbyes ring with epithets on the horrors of 2020. I object. 2020 brought bad, yes, mainly due to Covid 19’s effects on the lives of masses. It also enlightened us:
-staying home makes cleaner air.
-staying home increases home gardening and thus healthier eating.
-staying home leads to a slower, more thoughtful life, to extra time with family.
-staying home reconnects us with ourselves.
2020 lead to positives that have nothing to do with Covid 19:
-increased awareness and concern for the lives of others different from ourselves.
-increased awareness that discrimination and brutality among our police exists and we need to fix it.
-increased awareness of the ever growing income gaps in our society.
Covid 19 did bring:
-an increased awareness of the impacts of any pandemic and that we must prepare ourselves because there will be more.
-an increased appreciation of essential workers and their roles in our everyday lives.
-an increased appreciation for nurses and doctors and other health care workers.
Spring will come,
flowers will bloom,
birds will sing.
Yesterday, I heard Bishop Michael Curry speak on national news. I will close with one sentence which remains with me:
My family and I took a quick road trip to California and back over the Thanksgiving break. Why now in the time of Covid? Grandson is applying to colleges in CA and needed to see what he could. We did stay in hotels, picked them carefully, did not use any services–most are currently not available anyway. You put used towels, etc. in the hall, go to the main desk to pick up more yourself, etc. It was fine. For meals we did takeout and ate at the hotel. Twice we did eat at a restaurant outside where there was no one near. It was possible because it was not cold. I took a few photos which follow.
On a side street in a little town next to Pasadena. Camp Pendleton Marine Base near San Diego.
Near the UPS store in San Luis Obispo.
At the University of San Francisco, one of the few places where we were able to get out of the car and walk around.
Crossing the Gold Gate Bridge on Thanksgiving Day on the way to Muir Woods.
This and the following several photos were taken among the redwoods at Muir Woods. This is how we spent Thanksgiving Day.
If you stay on the main, paved paths, it is rather noisy. Even when there are signs for people to be quiet, they talk. Off the paved path all we could hear was one very annoyed crow.On our way back we crossed the Golden Gate again. In the following photo, Alcatraz is off in the distance.On the way to Flagstaff, where we stayed the first night, we had wanted to stop by Petrified Forest National Park but arrived about five minutes too late. Therefore, we made a point to drive all the way through on the way home. Rather difficult to believe that a lot of this was once a swamp with dinosaurs and huge trees.
On the way out or in, depending on which way you go, you can see the Painted Desert. Guess I caught my own shadow in this one.
It is an hour or so boat ride from Sorrento to Capri. Although not very crowded in November, apparently it is tourist heaven in the summer. The lower town contains many of the world’s major high end stores. This time of year most remained closed. Even though I am not a big fan of touristy destinations, I thoroughly enjoyed our day on Capri. I doubt I would like it so much in high season.
Looking down on the lower, main town from the town high on the island, Ana Capri. At the far point one can hike to the remains of Tiberius’ villa, where he hid the last ten years of his reign as Emperor of Rome. If he did not like you, off the cliff you went. I was standing on a trail with over 900 steps, carved by the Greeks even before the Roman times, that lead down to the lower town. This walkway leads to the path mentioned in the previous photo. This time of year Capri is lush, relaxing, and peaceful.This shop, among the few that were open, sold all sorts of chocolates with various limoncello products. The combination of chocolate, limoncello, and almonds is a taste of heaven.
I took all the above photos while strolling along the walkway shown in the third photo. Beauty lay everywhere I looked.
Capri is rugged. Houses hang off cliff edges, steep roads climb up and down near the sea’s edge. We strolled, went to a garden, found a little place to sit on steps and drink cappuccino .
For several weeks I noticed big bright white blossoms on tall stalks as I looked across the canyon in the evenings just before dusk. While it was still hot even at 8 during this latest heat wave, I hiked across the canyon for a look, taking various photos as I strolled along.
When it rains, water drains into this arroyo and crashes over the cliff near my bedroom.
Never bulldozed or cleared, this land allows ancient junipers to continue to thrive.
No water dropping off the cliff on these hot, dry days.
The flowers I could see from my house across the canyon. My wildflower book tells me these are a type of Stickleaf. To take a photo of the other flower, I had to climb up an incline covered with gypsum.
My dog, Athena, and I continued our hike along the canyon edge.
It was beginning to get dark as we headed back to the house.
I can also see this bush from across the canyon. I see no others like it and do not know what it is.
writingontherim 