manicure time

It's been quite a week for Gramsci: the vets for a check up yesterday (both cats passed with flying colors), and today Alice trimmed his little murder mittens.  Alice has a particular talent for doing this: I have always been too terrified.  He looks remarkably resigned here, but I think he may just have been living through his considerable disappointment after the England loss.

 

what's for breakfast?

A very fine Cooper's Hawk - just up the road - waiting patiently for something tasty to scuttle or fly past.  A small finch then became the object of its pursuit, but happily escaped ...

 

garden pots

A good view of my outside office: here, the cats (since they aren't allowed out) don't try and take over my revisions for me.  

And these pots are real!  Our nextdoor neighbors' house has just gone on the market, and I'm quite appalled by the photos of it - which of course, taken with a wide-angle lens, make it look enormously spacious (don't get me wrong - it's a lovely house, but even though ours is half the size, I prefer our views).  But - Photoshop! - or whatever realtors use these days.  I've been saying for a week or so - when are the pots of geraniums going to arrive outside, for the staging?  Today - they were there!  But ... on-line, only.  Front and back - lovely blooming planters.  Jugs of flowers inside.  And, worst of all ... they had built, fairly recently, a lovely little self-contained casita.  And here, again online, are pictures of it ... as a painter's studio (with easel, and paints); as a TV watching room; as a private gym; as a potter's studio ... worst of all, our lovely previous neighbor was, among other things, a talented potter, and, well, somehow this rings a little strangely. People are going to come round and view it, and are going to be shaking their heads, puzzled.  Or am I naive?  Are all real estate photos these day aspirational and fictional in this way?

 

sunset, two directions

Take your pick: we came out of our house this evening for a walk, and saw this to our right; on our way back, this was on our left.  Not bad ...

 

dryness

It really is dry here, and windy, too, which dries everything out even more.  A marker: I haven't yet pulled or murdered any tumbleweeds in the driveway or the yard - and that's the first time in twenty odd year.  Above, a soapweed yucca, down by the railroad - looking like a porcupine.  Below - yes, this looks like a sudden wild shower, but actually it's us watering the trees, a weekly treat for them.  Only this morning I managed to set up the vacillating spray so that it was inadvertently washing my study window, and here's Alice bravely stomping out to wrestle it into a more sympathetic position.

 

a catering arrangement

For the next two weeks, Alice will be doing the (evening) cooking, while I, supposedly, finish off The Book.  In practice, that means about five or six more paragraphs in the introduction, and a few more bits of tweaking elsewhere, and checking and checking, and some more checking, and changing around a few words, and panicking, and holding my head in my hands, and all the stuff like writing Alt Text captions for the images ... in other words, two weeks (plus a few days more) when cooking would provide some very welcome time-consuming procrastination.  But since I don't really have that time, I am very very grateful when some excellent stir fry appears on the table ...

 

Moth is getting washed

This is not the most elegant of positions, but I promise you - Gramsci really was doing his best to groom Moth, starting with her left ear and moving downwards.  It might look a little bit like Graham Platner behavior, but I promise you, nothing untoward was happening.  He truly does want to bond with her, whatever her agonized expression might reveal about her views on the subject.