The tree.

Yes, my husband called yesterday to say that he had stopped in at Home Depot for a look see and while there, had bought a tree. It is a “tiny” tree is says and he purchased all the necessary things to plant it and feed it and whatever.

That thing blending into the wall between the windows is “the pedestal”.

He has decided to place it on this cool looking pedestal we got in San Diego – the one that weighs a lot and the one the company moved for him. (I wish they could have moved the beach and a bit of the Pacific . . . Kono’s, the boardwalk, Skechers, Crystal Pier, Jake’s, my favorite coffee shop balcony, life guard station 22 . . . but I must remember to be grateful for what we have. And I am.)

My lunch at Jake’s.

I think he is going to take a picture of this tree, which may wind up on the porch of his apartment. (And he did and it is. The picture of the tree on the porch is the first picture above.)

View from our porch looking at other porches.

The porch is nice, but the floor is like a deck – there are spaces between the boards. Is this because it is Georgia and you want air to move? I don’t know. I didn’t think much about it until I knocked over a glass of Diet Coke and it went down to the patio beneath us. No one was out or maybe even home – lucked out, I guess. This is a round about way of pondering the watering of plants on his porch. Carefully, I would think – or in the dark of the late, late night.

This is the crazy gnome that lives in the Warner-Robins apartment.

I see it; I see it out the windows. It is falling quickly and heavily and fas. It is a snow that is just below freezing line. You can see the whiteness of the flakes, though, as they do a little scramble in their race to the ground. The high is supposed to be around 40, so I imagine we will ave rain soon. But right now, right this very minute, I am going to start a big fire and keep it going all day.

Such a post title doesn’t quite get it. Nothing was ever really wrong; Kathryn, 91, is fine. But for a little while, I was afraid. I was deep in a book when the phone rang and I saw it was a number I did not recognize; it was the medical alert people telling me Kathryn had activated her pendant. Just this morning when I called to check on her, she had mentioned an earache. But I didn’t remember that last part until I was out the door. At that point I also remembered that I didn’t have the key and ran back to the dining room and the china cabinet to get it.

Almost tripping down the steps, I ran across the lawn, across the street, down the sidewalk and around to her back door. And I am thinking, “What am I going to find?” I am steeling myself . . . Maybe I will wait with her on the floor holding her hand until the EMS get there. Maybe I will be stanching the flow of blood from a scalp wound.

I lunged in through the back porch door, wrestling the key out of the lock as I it opened and then stuck the key in the inside door. Then I looked up and Kathryn was looking at me through the window over the sink. She looked surprised. I didn’t know what to think.

I stumbled into the kitchen, asking, “Are you okay? Are you okay?” Her alarm had gone off accidentally, probably from pressing against the counter. At this point I was leaning against the counter, catching my breath.

Three police cars, two volunteer responders and one EMS crew later, I was back home . . . but a little too keyed up to read.

I want to go HERE. I want to go here on April 26 and hear the bagpipe people.

We have a piper who practices by walking up and down our streets, but he doesn’t look like Wilford Brimley, the way this gentleman does

Must use great strength . . .

OR, maybe I should stuff myself at the National Cornbread Festival in Tennessee – South Pittsburg.

More to the point, where will you be the first weekend in October – Apple Festival weekend? You have been coming here and I have loved, loved, your tin mugs with the choices of beverages drawn from kegs. I always get cherry wine and it is so good with the clear ice floating in it. But your schedule does not show you coming.

Bayou Billy, you are letting me down.

I have a table of the BB events and am going to attempt to add it:

Continue reading Bayou Billy . . . where are you right now? →

I saw the little green car yesterday; I went down to Vorderman’s to pay them for the last bit of work they did on it before we discovered the brakes were just not worth the money to repair, given the rust on the body . . . not to mention the duct tape on the driver’s side headlight bezel.

You know what, though, its little heart, its powerful heart – its engine – sounds so great – purring and and giving me that wonderful wake-up scent of diesel in the morning. It always wanted to run fast and smooth.

“You and me, AmeliaJake . . . You and me,” it seemed to say. I could hear it in the rhythm – in the controlled thunder of its chug.

A lot of people wouldn’t have had it – too old, dents, some rust; but I knew it was solid and upright and of good character.

But it is time to let it go and I wish I knew someone who could use the engine with its new fast start glow plugs. Somebody who has an old 1976 pristine 300D body that has been tucked away in someone’s garage. A car that looks so perfect, but harbors an engine that has also been let to sit. I’d say, “Here, take little greenie’s engine.”

Wait a minute! Maybe I’d say, “Sell me your chassis and little greenie and I will chug again, free as the wind . . . well, with maybe a little scent of diesel in the air.

Yes, the coupons came – she says they look like a credit card – and Mother took one of them up to the Wal-Mart in Sturgis, Michigan and purchased a Magnavox model for $49.95 or something like that. (The coupon took that down to $9.95 plus tax.) Since she has 90 days to use them, she is going to check into other manufacturers’ products. But now she has this one and we will be hooking it up . . . just kind of for the heck of it, out of curiosity, if you will. We know it’s a long time until next February, but heck, we don’t want to delay and wind up facing the Christmas Eve Toy Putting Together Syndrome. Now, that’s stress.

I’m grateful that these coupons are available because my mother, child of the Great Depression as she is, might decide to forgo getting a converter box and just do more reading. Not that reading wouldn’t be fine, but I really would like for her to have some way to watch news stories and important happenings . . . such as the attack on the World Trade Center.

I actually recognize this name, but I don’t think I realized it was in the middle of a peninsula sticking out into Lake Superior. It used to be a copper mining town and now I think it is mostly service and tourist related with a college – Michigan Technological University. It is right across a canal from Hancock, Michigan, which is also a retired copper town with a college – Finlandia, I think. I believe a read a comment that college students make up a sizable part of the population.

As I understand it, a lot of immigrants were brought into this area when copper mining was in its heyday, with problems arising between those of English descent and those from other countries. There was a strike in 1913 and – here is another fact I am not well-versed in – apparently one of the union leaders refused to allow people to aid fire victims and so he was shot and put on a train out of town. There is more to it than this, of course, and I am going back to look through some records.

I like doing this – studying the history of an area. Once in Pacific Beach, I spent a perfectly good beaching day at the library looking at old photos of PB and reading old accounts. Originally, a lot of the homes built there were more Queen Anne style than southwestern. Ack! I just realized that the old frame house that I always went by didn’t seem to be there last time I was there. I wonder if older people lived there and when they died their descendants sold the land to developers. First goal: tear down the house.

In Houghton and Hancock, the businesses were built of logs and then frame construction with gabled roofs to handle the snow. There have been several fires and now you can see a lot of brick. I’m just starting this look see, so I’m off to explore.

Aha, forget the logs, forget the frame houses, forget the bricks – no, not really – but the local high school (Calumet?) is building a yurt in its construction class. Here, where I live, the kids built a geothermal home. A yurt, as in Mongolian nomadic portable housing, has possibilities. Now that we don’t have a place in Pacific Beach anymore, could I just go out there and store my yurt by day in a public locker or a rental space in someone’s garage. I could beach by day and do the yurt thing at night. Of course, a yurt is a pretty much a tent and I think the cops would call it camping. Okay, I need a stealth yurt.

Here’s an interesting photo from a Ontonagon, a little town on Lake Superior.

I hope they have a common room with a big old fireplace.