It's Fall, It's Pomegranate Season!

Rose from my garden

Back in Wisconsin, I dreaded fall, because while fall is absolutely stunning with its oranges, reds, golds and browns dressing the trees and then raining from the sky, once the leaves come down, cold descends like a blanket for the next 6 months. Cold stifles breath, thought, movement. The cold was so overwhelming and long-lasting that it was hard to enjoy fall's finery for the depression brought on by the shorter, colder days. 

Lunch-time pomegranate

Here, there are flowers, fruit and fall color. The temperatures won't go below 28 and that, to me, is amazing.  In January, that's bikini weather in  Wisconsin.  My sister surprised me with the season's first pomegranates last Saturday at the Davis Farmer's Market.  Aside from the citrus family, which one can pluck from trees here, pomegranates have to rank as the fruits of the Gods.  I made quick work of one pomegranate for lunch.

Fall brings with it lots of yard work, and until I moved up to Davis from Fairfield a month ago, I had been able to avoid all forms of manual outdoor work since moving out here in February.  Not so now. On Wednesday--the first day of the blog class, it was slated to rain in the afternoon, so I had to rush and get the 6 bags of soil amenders on top of the hard-pack in my 2 raised beds.

In theory it was soil. According to my new landlords (more on them later--they're amazing), it was clay.  I did manage to load the bags from my truck (the aloha-mobile) on to the beds and then turn over the beds thanks to the rain holding off.  In fact, the rains held off long enough for the San Francisco Giants to win the first game of the World Series. Imagine that.

So today is the last day of my vacation, which I have spent putzing around the hale (Hawaiian for "home"); I work over the Halloween weekend and that should prove interesting and quite busy, for while the young'uns are out trick or treating, the old 'uns are out trick and mayheming and making our lives interesting.  Have a Happy Halloween.  Here is my cat Gizmo, here to say that not all black cats are scary.

Have a Purrrrfect Halloween

Why Blog It?

Rose in bud at a foreclosed home

 Originally, I began this as a way to keep in touch with friends and family spread out around the globe. I knew they would want to know how things were going with my new life in California. I grew up in a family of teachers and writers, so as a nurse, starting a blog makes me feel a bit like a bull in a china shop.

Madison, eat your heart out, no more $4 peppers!

 I'd heard about the blog class from my sister, Hannah Klaus Hunter who has a gorgeous site and took the blog class before me. So filled with the possibilities and the commitment to building a more vibrant blog, I signed up for a 4-week blog class with Cynthia Morris and Alyson Stanfield.


Today’s assignment is to describe my ideal blog visitors and readers.  Frankly, if I get just a few "frequent flyers," as we call them in the ICU, I will be happy.  My ideal reader is someone who is working full-time and pursuing art on a part-time or side basis. Perhaps starting life anew and healing after a difficult life event.  I've relocated from Madison, WI to the far west and my blog is a means of using photography, art and writing to reflect on what I've experienced and what I'm discovering in California to forge a new and better life.


So Happy Halloween and when I was out walking, what should I see, but a plastic flamingo--not an unusual site in Madison, where the pink flamingo rules since the Pail and Shovel Party put thousands of them on Bascom Hill at UW Madison in 1981. But in my neck o' the woods we keep 'em pink and dress 'em up for each holiday. Here, they look like they've just come out of the CAT Scanner!

I'm Radioactive!

Blogging is Good for You/A Rare Day Off

"Taking time to write a blog can be time consuming but it is worth it in the long run." That was my sister, Hannah. The original title of this post was supposed to be "A Rare Day Off." But in learning how to insert photos (never mind how to do photo/text wrap arounds), I've frittered away a good hour now futzing with it. And now why does Hannah keep asking me why I don't blog more?!

Kitty in the Hale (Home)

As a nurse, I work 12-hour shifts too many times per week and since it was going to be in the 90s, I decided I would enjoy the nice warm weather (my favorite kind) by being lazy, plus I didn't feel so good and I was exhausted from work. So I went for my morning walk, started the laundry, took out the trash, started watering the new oleanders, fed the felines, fed me and then crawled back under the crisp, clean sheets.  I woke up to the dulcet tones of Hannah's ringtone.  I looked down to see Faith, my kitten (pictured above) luxuriating in the bed spread. Lunch calls. No suffering, the sky is blue and par Davis, it is absolutely gorgeous out. 

Operation Fig Rescue

Lunch finds us sitting on Hannah's porch just a few blocks away, musing about our travel bucket list. But I was sitting there the whole time just enjoying the warm weather wash over me, thinking that it was so pleasant right there on the porch eating left overs, knowing the beach and the mountains were just 2 hours away whenever I needed them.  Much more important was to rescue the remaining figs off of her tree. Home-made fig dressing on the hoof. So up the ladder I went, higher and higher to pluck the waiting fruit from their boughs.  I'm salivating as I'm typing. There are rumours of pesto and fig dressing drenched salad tonight with rotissierie chicken.  I love my days off.