sage seed head

With the temperature in the 90s, everything out back is drying out horribly quickly.  I've been watering what I can (which is a tricky question of judgment: these are native plants that don't like too much moisture, for the most part, but there again, some of them seem to be unequivocally withering overnight).  But these sage plants seem to love it: their seed heads are dry and crinkly in the right way, and I hope that means that lots of self-seeding has already taken place.  Ditto with the poppies.  And I'm hoping that I can keep most of the other plants gasping along until the temperatures drop a bit later this week. Of course, I, too, rather think that I'm developing withering tendencies.

 

Season opener

I can never get over the fact that one of the ridiculous perks of my job status - maybe the only one left ... - is an annual invitation to the President's Suite at a football game.  Was USC saving money here in any obvious way, I wondered?  For a start, no ability to choose which game I might want to attend: one knows one's lowly status (probably in terms of any hard cash one might give the university, I suspect) when one gets invited to the Missouri State game, rather than being able to voice one's preference for, let's say, Michigan.  But who am I to complain when I'm handed a very tasty cocktail on a sunny afternoon, and see USC win 73-13?  That is not a typing error.  It's the most points scored by USC in a game since 1930.  Missouri State aren't very good, of course ...And some money must have been saved by the fact that the practice of serving cocktails in a remarkable tacky take-home commemorative glass, introduced under Carole Folt's tenure, mercifully seems to have been dropped.

The rockets were badly timed and their ascent didn't manage to coincide with the Rockets' Red Glare of the National Anthem ... but they were still there -

and the flag (at half mast because of the Minnesota shooting last week) was fluttering in front of a tower at the California Science Center holding the Space Shuttle Endeavour.

Here come the players!  (these are SC, of course - the Missouri State ones were so overwhelmed to be in the Coliseum that quite a few of them ran out with their cell phones out, filming the moment.  It's their first game playing at the top end of college football, and - apart from the fact that they were the first to score, with a field goal - coming out onto the pitch might well have been their happiest moment).

I swapped my (empty) glass for a stylish aluminum chilled bottle of water; we each ate large helpings of ice cream, left the most lopsided game I should think I'll ever see halfway through the third quarter, and were home before MS had finished being pulverized.

 

another stray feather

I don't understand this particular feather, for a whole lot of reasons.  It seems posed, neatly woven between two of the wire strands that make up our deck fencing - but how, exactly, did it get there?  And to whom does it belong?  If we were in England, I'd say, obviously, a magpie.  But although there are Yellow-Billed Magpies in SoCal (I've just checked), I've never seen one here.   Maybe one of the woodpeckers?  But when I go to a website called "identify my feather", the most likely candidate seems to be a black-legged kittiwake, which aren't seen abundance out back.  Or, just maybe, a bald eagle (and indeed, that seems a bit more plausible, though not very - although something definitely caught and ate and left the remains of a baby possum out there fairly recently).  However, today, I can't extricate any allegorical meaning.

 

fractured sky

I always love the sculptured holes of the canopies that appear before home football games... today the sky was atypically cloudy, which did even more for the abstract composition.  Too cloudy for some, indeed: I ran into a colleague as we were going to and from our respective classes, and she, en route to teach a photo history session, was clutching some little packs of cyanotype paper and lamenting that it was going to be much too overcast to do this successfully.  I know how she felt: as I told her, the same thing happened to me last semester.

And that's the end of the first week teaching! 

 

floating, drowning

This feather, half submerged in one of the campus fountain basins, is a perfect metaphor.  I can't believe that we're only at Wednesday of Week One - it feels like we're about half way through the semester already ...

 

an appropriate bouquet

Can I claim that it's a bouquet if it's really a jug full of felt tip pens?  In any case, this is my gesture to celebrate the start of the semester ... in the form of a new stationery treat.  And the jug is an old favorite: a blue aluminum Greek wine-serving receptacle, bought, if I remember correctly, on Amorgos (on the other hand, the retsina could have addled my recollection...).  One grad class, and one undergrad class under my belt, and both of them are shaping up really promisingly.

 

the cat whisperer

I came upstairs this morning to a not unfamiliar scene: Alice talking Gramsci through his breakfast.  He's less an eater than a grazer; a cat who will take a few mouthfuls, and then wander off.  But since, these days, he and Moth can't eat the same food, his bowl has to be guarded lest she makes a determined assault on forbidden sustenance (so yes, he is indeed eating on the butcher block, while she's down on the floor).  So I often find Alice talking him through a meal, telling him what a splendid eater he is; how this will make him into a strong, handsome cat (Gramsci El Guapo, as one of our visitors this summer so rightly put it), and other soft nothings while he eats his way through a small, but delicious kitty-sized meal.

 

a birthday dinner for Lydia

... with Lydia, as the Birthday Girl, looking faintly blurry and out of focus, and full of cheese (I'm guilty, as aways, on that front, too), and Connie playing the role of the Serious Intellectual (with a halo).  Barbrix, re-imagined - great new front patio; good wine; food was hit or miss (but a shout out to the golden beets and to the carrots, and, indeed, to the Barbrix staff, who recognized and celebrated Lydia as a long-time regular).

 

the impossible can happen

At the moment, this seems all too apposite a comment on the Dodgers, who lost again, today.  I'm not quite sure who this is meant to represent, but since Michael Conforto is wearing 23 this season, I'd say that him scoring at all in any meaningful way would come under this heading.  On the other hand, one could extend the maxim in all kinds of ways: I'll invite you to insert your own favorite impossibility coming true, here.

This might have been our first time ever driving over early to Proof Bakery for a breakfast treat (inspired by a kind gift earlier in the week): may I recommend the corn, pepper and honey biscuit?  Then, actually, the impossible did happen: in this heatwave, we took breakfasat back home to eat on the deck, and it started to rain, in very large drops.  This didn't last long, but it fell into the category of the totally unexpected.

back to school

... or at the very least, to the Graduate/Faculty Welcome Back Breakfast, and my meeting with graduate students who are still in course work.  I'm so apprehensive about what this year will bring - for the staff in the first instance, and then for the university as a whole, given the enormity of the operating budget deficit, and so on, that I couldn't find it within myself to give my usual rousing Polyanna-ish remarks (luckily at least one other colleague managed much better than I in that respect, but none of us were exactly turning cartwheels). I'm hoping that my start-of-year sense of enthusiasm returns before Monday.  It's not normally so absent ... and I should know since I am, yes, heading into my forty-sixth year of full-time academic employment.  Ouch.

 

out of the darkness ...

and this will have to stand, symbolically, for the fact that I'm certainly feeling better - if itchy -and the fatigue hasn't been too swamping, today, until this evening.  My enthusiasm for getting up early in order to host our departmental Welcome Back breakfast is somewhat minimalist.  And why isn't the Chair doing that, you might wonder?  Ah - she will kick it off, but she's been summoned to a Dean's Meeting for Department Chairs, at which goodness knows which fresh budgetary horrors will be announced (or more bland platitudes uttered ...).

 

Inside, looking out

This is as close as I was allowed to go to Bright Light today - given that LA is having an increasingly hot heatwave, this perhaps wasn't a hardship - and one can hardly complain that this is the view from one's bedroom window (and I did, in the early evening, stealthily head out as far as the pot of mint in the front yard, and, eventually, the recycling bin).  One more day of being confined - and by the avoidance of Bright Light, I should say that this includes bright domestic lighting, as well.  

My thanks to everyone for their well-wishes: truly, the worst bit has been fatigue, as my immune system kicked in to fight all the rogue skin cells yesterday.  Of course I'm very grateful that it works so efficiently - but it was all too reminiscent of my response to Covid shots.  As for my skin itself - my face is an unsightly red, and feels as though someone has taken sandpaper to a bad case of sunburn, and it itches, too - but let's hope that means that the treatment is working at full force.

 

roughly what I feel like

This was from this morning's walk - outside an open garage down the street - beige and slumped.  Only it's in bright sunlight, and I'm not allowed bright lights of any kind - not just sunlight, but interior lights - until 48 hours are up, or more like 40, now...  I have a tendency to develop actinic keratoses on my face and scalp (my father was the same), which have a 5-10 % chance of turning into cancer (two of them did so last year, and had to be painfully if efficiently excised).  So today at USC's Keck Hospital I was given light therapy treatment to try, we hope, to zap them for a while.  This means being covered with an ointment for an hour (itch itch itch, like little spiders with claws crawling over one's skin), and then being put under a kind of cone (always ominous when people say "are you claustrophic?") for 16 minutes 40 seconds (precisely), while all the affected bits itch more, and smart, and burn.  Then I came home and literally fell asleep in a darkened room for a couple of hours.  I never do that (except after Covid vaccines).  By now my face is red and lumpy and lobster like - let us hope it subsides by Friday's Graduate Welcome Back Breakfast, which will be my first outing into daylight.  If I look as I currently do, I guess I'll try and borrow a beekeeper's outfit or something else that should cover my face effectively.

 

other people's brush clearance

Brush clearance is undoubtedly a good thing - but our up-hill neighbors seem to have managed to send a whole lot of brush over our fence, squashing it in the process, and enormously increasing our stock of dead wood.  Also, it's phenomenally ugly, overshadowing our re-growing plumbago.  Time, I fear, for a conversation ... (ok, I will probably back out, like a coward, and leave this up to Alice.  She's very good at the Firm Touch).

 

look, Mothy!

Mothy! Look what the lovely house occupants left for us!  Mousies!  In a bowl on the kitchen butcher block!  Isn't that the best?

Grammy - they probably feel bad, because the house SMELLS AS IF ANOTHER CAT HAS BEEN HERE.

It doesn't matter, Moth.  Not if there are Mousies.

...

It's good to be back, even if the coyotes are howling loudly outside.
 

(ominous) transport

I thought that today I'd be posting a cute picture or two of transporting ourselves, two cats, a whole load of flowers, and so on, back to LA.  And as usual. we're overnighting at La Posada: went for a post-dinner walk down to the tracks - saw the huge headlights of a train that was like Westward the Course of Empire - all one needed were deer fleeing across the tracks - and then: the train.  It was a military transport train: maybe three hundred vehicles?  No tanks, I think, but big trucks, and jeeps, and jeeps with reinforced gun turrets, and ... everything.  It was chilling.  And why?  Or, for yes, military transport trains surely happen, from time to time, why now?  As one of the other hotel guests watching said - maybe it's for Trump's next parade.  Or is it the National Guard leaving LA and heading for DC?  Or ...  Whatever it was, it was very sobering.  Apologies for the quality of the photos: it was dark, and everything was moving ...

 

last day-ness

Ah, this summer has gone by far too fast.  Up early - not, alas, for hiking, but with a day full of tasks, including packing.  Packing.  Gramsci is horrified by the process (probably because he associates it with my leaving him forlorn and bereft) and so he spent very much of the day in my suitcase, despite repeat assurances that he's going to be hitting the road too, and in the same car ...

I very much appreciate how his tail stripes mimic one of my jackets.

 

31 years!

of a friendship that's very precious to me, and of hiking together!  Today Alfredo introduced me to the Grasshopper Canyon trail - not far from here; just the other side of Cañoncito - which was pretty, shaded, rocky - alongside a mostly, but not entirely dry arroyo, where the stream water kept disappearing underground.  A little rugged in places, but very easy underfoot, for the most part. Perfect quiet (well, apart from us chattering away as we caught up with news).  A chipmunk.  A grey squirrel.  Some mysterious concrete blocks that, so far as I could tell from digging around on line when I got back, most probably were the relics of a gold mining enterprise.

A rock covered in hand prints, which spoke, quietly, to memory.  

 

another evening, another patio

Trying to cram in as much by way as is possible of seeing friends before we leave - another dinner on another pretty patio, this time with very tastefully colored parasols ... 

 

new mexican yellows

Some sunflowers from this morning's walk - by now, they are plentiful all over Eldorado.  And then the state flag, in Ohori's, where we went to stock up on coffee before our return (yes, I know we order it by mail, but it's always good to come back with some).

This evening I rescued my third snake of the summer from the road - two have been sunbathing, foolishly, and this one - I don't know, but he had a puncture wound (hawk? early evening owl?) and won't, I think, be long for this world.  Next summer I fully intend to go on a snake recognition, rescue and recovery course - I rarely do more with them than check they don't have rattles attached to their tails, and only remember some time afterwards that I should have checked their pupils (rattlesnakes have disconcerting vertical pupils, whereas the gopher snakes that look very like them have round ones, like cats).  But there again, I don't spend a lot of time bending over and chatting to reptiles - "sweetie - can I stare into your eyes?" - I just look for two long sticks and lift them up and remove them to the side - or in the case of the big bull snake last week, escort it off the road.  Still, I think some slightly more formal training might be a wise idea.  And then I can become one of those local volunteers who's on call with thick gloves and a bucket.

 

view from our table

Although we've not eaten often at Harry's this summer, I'll miss it when we head back ... we weren't actually outside, but on the windswept back porch: all the same, the view of the garden patio was there ...  Just a few more days: I don't want to waste them in packing; don't want to leave everything to the last minute ... and so on.  

 

morning, evening

It was a grey day, and then a rather startling sunset.  The sky really was the color: there are fires to the west of us - nothing close, I'm glad to say, but that doesn't stop the atmosphere filling up with particulate matter and our throats getting sore overnight.  Given how hot it's been, the morning glories are all starting to look a bit ragged by now - but they are still putting up a good show ...

 

chile roasting

There really is nothing that says - end of summer, back to school time like the smell of roasting green chiles in the air ... it's a good job I like green chile with almost everything I can think of (maybe not breakfast oats, but I could try??) ...

 

the twa corbies

As I was walking all alane,

I heard twa corbies making a mane;

The tane unto the t’other say,

‘Where sall we gang and dine the day?’

‘In behind yon auld fail dyke,

I wot there lies a new slain knight;

And naebody kens that he lies there,

But his hawk, his hound, and his lady fair.

‘His hound is to the hunting gane,

His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame,

His lady’s ta’en another mate,

So we may make our dinner sweet.

‘Ye’ll sit on his white hause-bane,

And I’ll pike out his bonny blue een;

Wi ae lock o his gowden hair,

We’ll theek our nest when it grows bare.

‘Mony an ane for him makes mane,

But nane sall ken whare he is gane;

Oer his white banes, when they are bare,

The wind sall blaw for evermair.’

No dead knights in the arroyos around here today (although we did see a neatly filleted and eviscerated snake yesterday).  Still, I wouldn't trust these two not to make very clean pickings if they came upon one.

 

today's working conditions

I love little Gramsci, without question.  But ever since he was a small kitten, he has made a point of positioning himself between me and my computer, and - well, being a presence.  No point in trying to interest him in the nineteenth century, or ecological art criticism, or even the university's budgetary precarity: his paws, he believes, are unarguably more compelling.

 

lemons

There is something almost ecclesiastical and ceremonial about these two yellow fruit, but they were just sitting there in front of me at breakfast time.  They are not awaiting sacrifice to the God of Citrus (indeed, they have remained unsqueezed all day); they have no symbolic valence.  But they were, indisputably, making their presence felt.

 

You can take a cat ...

For a start, I didn't buy this cat bed for Moth, but for Gramsci, who has otherwise been occupying an outdoor chair cushion that's somehow ended up on the living room floor. They are now both steadfastly ignoring it, despite my having put fresh catnip, a toy mouse, and a crinkle fish taco toy inside it.  Indeed Moth's look suggests that she wouldn't deign to tread in such a piece of crap, and she'll now go back to her woven straw bowl, thank you.  Grams has marched off to Alice's folded up yoga mat.  There's no pleasing some cats ...

 

she's out!

She's fully out! and as you can seen. co-existing happily with the MGs.  Very hot outside, though - but of course, since she's a sunflower, I guess that makes her fairly content.

On a day when yet more bad university financial news - or rather, some more precise details of cuts that will affect us all - start to trickle out, it's good to have some symbolic floral hopefulness.

 -

 

emerging

I have been curiously excited by this sunflower, because she is a volunteer - growing up in one of our pots, but not planted, and nor was there a sunflower there, or anywhere nearby, last summer.  Maybe a mouse hopefully hid a sunflower seed, and forgot where they'd put it?  She's made a great spurt over the past couple of days, and this morning was unfurling into a very hot day (during which I managed to write, and send off, a promotion letter twelve days early.  For anyone who's familiar with my habit of working to deadlines, you will be ... surprised?  Impressed?  Maybe I've turned a new leaf, or petal, in my old age: it certainly feels good).

 

august, market

We tend to go the Farmers Market on a Tuesday, not a Saturday, when it's quieter - but of course there isn't anything like the same variety of things on a weekday.  For a start, Gonzalez' potatoes (and fennel, and leeks) are there at weekends.  But there are also more flowers, and dried bundles, and things generally aimed at tourists rather than locals (there are also many more tourists).

Not, I suspect, that the tourists go for the composting redworms, which, I suspect, need more maintenance than we could give them - or at least much more compost than they would get when we weren't here and feeding them with the end parts of leek stalks.  Our own rotating compost bin is actually looking pretty good this year - we've been assiduous in watering and turning it.

And just to continue this week's bee theme: on a power supply box by the parking lot ...

 

a cogitating quail

This was pure luck - there was no way in which I could expect a quail, cleaning between their toes, to put the quaily crest in such perfect alignment with some sunlight shining between juniper tree branches that it seemed as though they had thought-bubbles coming out of the top of their head.  But there you are!  It's getting to the time of the year where there are quails everywhere, although I haven't seen any clutches of truly little ones yet...