My therapist weighs 1200 pounds

Tristan and Isolde, by Edmund Blair Leighton

It seems like the old sun never shut down this weekend, except for a few short hours on either side of midnight. It's hot in Seattle and a record high expected today, which doesn't make for very good sleep in our UN-air-conditioned part of the country.  Well, who needs much this time of year, anyway?

We went downtown Sunday afternoon for the last symphony of the season.  The program included the beautiful orchestral preludes from Wagner's operas, Tannhäuser and Tristan and Isolde.  Since just the introductions fill half a symphony program, that gives you an inkling of how long the actual operas are! But it was nice to sit in cool Benaroya Hall for a couple of hours, and now we don't go back until fall. 

I volunteered at the Little Bit horse show on Saturday morning and had a job in concessions (keeping the popcorn machine going, selling t-shirts, etc.)  The best part was seeing the horses and meeting some of the nicest people ever at this amazing therapeutic riding center.  Not to mention, they had a nifty little estate sale going on the side to raise money.  It was fun and Nana's toy box has some new treasures for Maya and Nova.

The Little Bit organization recently moved to a newly rennovated faculty near Redmond.  Just look at this tack room-- neat as a pin!

Lovely grounds for the hard-working but contented horses, and kind volunteers in red shirts everywhere.

This is the "barrel racing" class...

And the winner of the "creative costume" class.  These beautifully trained and patient horses are the real stars of Little Bit.

Not many horses would carry "Tuxedo Man" around so happily.

Or take such good care of a "Power Ranger."  I love the look on the face of this sweet 28 year-old mare. She takes her job very seriously. Some of the riders were wearing t-shirts that read, "My therapist weighs 1200 pounds."  So true. 

Heat wave

The desert southwest may break all-time heat records this weekend, with the temperatures in Phoenix and Las Vegas close to 120 degrees.  Death Valley may reach 130.  Seattle will be at the same weather party, and it might be 90 here by early next week.  After a stormy, wet week, a massive ridge of high pressure is building over the western part of the country.  You might hear our complaining all the way back to the east coast-- most people in the Northwest hate hot weather.   

What this means for me is watering and more watering, because I'll be taking care of a neighbor's yard along with ours next week.  We also have a busy weekend coming up.  I'm volunteering with my friend Dolly on Saturday at the Little Bit Therapeutic Horse Show, which will be fun but a long day, and on Sunday we have our last symphony of the season.  The program includes selections from Wagner, and the Saint-Saens "Organ Symphony," which sounds like heavy going for a warm summer afternoon.  More on that Monday.  In the meantime, have a wonderful weekend wherever you are!

One of those

Oh, I had a frustrating day yesterday.  I was back at the opticians for the fourth time having my expensive new glasses adjusted.  I know I'm fussy, but when you have something hanging off your face all day the tiniest little gouge or poke becomes wildly irritating.  The other problem is I'm vain, so I sometimes let myself be swayed by the girl at the store who I happen to really like.  If she tells me that those red frames "look so cute and brighten up my face," I respond, "I'll take them!"  Even if that style will probably feel like a lump of cement on the bridge of my nose.

John, on the other hand (not being much of a fashionista) buys the frames he likes in bulk, knowing the world changes and he will never find them again if he doesn't stock up.  That way he can just pull a fresh frame out of storage and have new lenses put in as the years go by. He will probably still be doing that when he's 85.

Then, on the way home from the optical shop, I noticed an extremely old lady creeping across the street at one of our murderous intersections in West Seattle.  The light was changing, she was in the middle, I asked if she needed help and she said: No! she did not.  That's fine, I intend to be just as cranky in 20 years. I'm working on it now.

Let's see, what else?  I hit the wall with ukulele practice, trying to read music and painfully turn the notes on the page into little plinks on my instrument. How many times do I have to tell my brain a line on the staff is the note D?  Who would guess that Oh, Susanna could sound so sad?    Well, Matt did say that it was like learning a foreign language, but with different rules. It doesn't help that all of these old "Ukulele Uncles" on the Internet are so good, and always harping how "anyone can play the ukulele."

One good thing happened yesterday.  My cruel digital scale (not my nice dial scale) says I finally lost the 5 pounds I gained after hurting my ankle in January. Another way that John is smarter than me: He never weighs himself.

Flown the coop

The chickadee family moved on. Maybe they went to Disneyland?  The parents certainly deserved a vacation. After all that drama, the actual nest leaving was nicely anti-climatic.  There was a day of shrill chirping coming from shrubs (babies) and loud encouragement (parents) to get your act together and fly. That was all.  When I was positive it was empty, I moved their silly nest chair over to a more secluded part of the garden where I have a little shrine to Sizzle.  Of course they will probably hate it there. The last thing they need is humans deciding what's good for them. 

For such tiny creatures, they ruled the yard while they were nesting, constantly calling and scolding, but I haven't heard any chickadees lately. Now there are different bird noises in the morning and evening.  John was up especially early on Monday, and he said they were already at it by 4:10 am.  The house finches sing beautifully and there are some secretive sparrows and maybe a Beewick's wren in the hedge.  The robins sound monotonous, but still pretty. But the other evening when I was trying to get to sleep, a bird was making a sound like a miniature hammer hitting a stone.  It went on for about an hour.

It's wet in Seattle this week.  Long periods of drizzle and then several minutes of tropical downpour.  We had thunder, lightening and flickering lights yesterday afternoon. But they say it will be sunny in the high 80's in a few days--  the perfect recipe for jungle.

Climb every mountain

Rock climbing in the North Cascades...

The throw away tomato

NATURE the gentlest mother,

Impatient of no child,

The feeblest or waywardest--

Her adomination mild...

Emily Dickinson

This tomato plant grew really well, smack up against the compost bin.  I bought too many little starts  in April, and when I walked over to the bin to throw the foundlings out, I didn't have the heart, so I stuck them in the ground instead to die of natural causes. Surprise!

It looks shady there under the grapevine,  but there must be enough morning sun on the wood fence (not to mention all of those wonderful nutrients leaching out of my compost bin :-)

And the pampered siblings in pots on the south wall are doing great, too.  So far, a nice summer shaping up for tomatoes.

A happy instrument

I suppose the ukulele is an easy instrument to learn compared to something like the diabolical bassoon, for example.  Although any instrument takes lots of practice and dedication, so it helps if you like the sound it makes, and it doesn't drive those around you crazy.

I love my ukulele and it's a happy instrument that makes people smile, even if you're not as good as Tiny Tim (yet.)  A badly played violin or trumpet is torture to one and all, and of course I don't have the ear for such refined instruments, not to mention, enough years left in my life to learn to play them.

Yesterday my new music stand arrived in the mail from Musician's Friend, a wonderful Internet company if you happen to need anything at all musical. Now I feel like a real musician when I practice, instead of hunching over the coffee table trying to see the music through my "progressive" lenses, which was giving me a stomach ache.

I'm painstakingly learning to translate music notes on the staff to plinks on my uke.  Yes! I am learning to read music! It gave me a thrill this week to pick out a few notes of Ode to Joy, on page 3 of Ukulele Method Book 1.  This opened my eyes in other ways, too, thinking about how Beethoven built these simple notes (EEFGGFED, etc) into one of the greatest works of music ever written. And still, even a rank beginner can pick them out easily enough.

Click below (it will start in a few seconds) for a beautiful presentation and arrangement by Michael Lynch of Ode to Joy, played on the humble ukulele.  It brought tears to my eyes.


 

Solstice

Today is the first day of summer, and the longest day of the year. The sun seems to "stand still" in the sky-- the Solstice. The sun is below the horizon for only about 7 hours tonight. Welcome summer!  It won't ever be quite the same without Annette Funicello.

Up until now our June has felt more like a July, and we set another obscure all-time weather record in Seattle.  The first 14 days of June had high temperatures of 68 degrees or warmer, for the first time in 68 years of record keeping.  June is usually cool and damp, but the flower beds were soon dried out and the lawns already turning brown. A nice light rain finally came down yesterday afternoon, and this morning is chilly and wet.  So maybe things are getting back to normal.

Shades of green

Distance
and a certain light
makes anything artistic—
it doesn't matter what.

May Swenson

In another lifetime, I was an English major at San Diego State University.  It was about then when the first "feminist" poetry books were being published. I still have some scribbled up, crumbling old paperbacks (Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich) on a bottom shelf somewhere.  Who knows (or for that matter cares?) what my margin notes mean now.  If you were on a college campus in the early 70's, everything was loaded, exciting, relevant.

In the evenings, I'd sometimes go with a friend to a "women's lib" reading circle, where we discussed these angry poems and talked about how mad we were, too. It's hard to describe the impact of books like Our Bodies, Ourselves, first published in 1971. All those things no one ever told us! Compared to now, of course, when everything you want to know (and then some) is available at the flick of a keystroke. 

Young women were riled up then and with good reason, after a few millennium of injustice. I'm getting on the soapbox here, but American girls take their everyday freedoms for granted, and forget there was a "radical women's movement."  In many parts of the world, women don't ride horses, drive cars or take trips alone on airplanes. Sure, some of the demonstrations in the 60's and 70's sound silly now.  If a grandma told her granddaughter that she once burned her bra in a public bonfire, it would be hilarious.  But at the time, it scared and shocked people.

Looking back, what strikes me most about those "women's lib meetings" (I still hate that phrase) is the attention we paid to the issues and each other.  I suppose the biggest difference was we didn't have any distracting technology. The pay phone was down the street, if you had a dime.

So anyway, these were our favorite "feminist" poets from the 1970's:

Anne Sexton (dead, alcoholism)
Sylvia Plath (dead, suicide)
Adrienne Rich (died in 2010)
Marge Piercy (still very much alive.)

Garrison Keillor reads her poems sometimes on his daily radio program called The Writer's Almanac.  A link on his website led me to an interview with Marge Piercy, where she talked about the importance of observing nature. And just paying attention. 

Here's an excerpt:

You have said that the best gifts you can give a poet are field guides to rocks, stars, birds, amphibians, and wildflowers. Why would these be particularly helpful to a poet?

Imagery comes directly out of your own core. It comes from how you perceive the world, how carefully you look and listen, how well you remember, how your mind works. What we have to draw on is largely dependent on how much attention we've paid to what's within and outside of us. Learning to pay attention: looking at shades of green. Not all trees are green, and even those that are differ wildly. How many birds can you identify?

 In other words, how many times have you looked carefully at a bird? Can you tell by the weeds and wildflowers growing in a meadow if it is dry or wet, good soil or scanty, sweet or acid? How does the bark of a beech differ from the bark of an elm? The bark of a black cherry? The bark of a Scotch pine from that of a pitch pine?"

The more precise the attention you pay to the world around you, the more you will rejoice in, the more stuff will be in you that rises as real metaphor and simile, expressive, precise, powerful, felt. Anything we truly experience and take in is the stuff of metaphor...The wider your curiosity ranges, the more interesting metaphors will rise. Memory and observation can be trained to precision and retention.

Marge Piercy

Picture a little love nest...

Picture a little love nest, 

Down where the roses cling,

Picture that same sweet love nest,

See what a year can bring...

from, Makin' Whoppee
by Donaldson and Kahn

The chickadee parents are busy from morning to dusk feeding their babies, and trust me, that is a long shift this time of year in Seattle.  The clamor in the box has gone from that newborn, high-pitched whining to loud, greedy demands for food. Teenagers.

Mom and dad bring them a assortment of juicy insects and then come out of  the box each time with a lump of poop that they carry away and drop someplace else.  Cleanliness is next to godliness.  Actually, keeping their front yard perfectly clean is another way to fool the roaming riff-raff.  

My respect for their "birdie smarts" increases. Perhaps the silly box wasn't such a bad choice after all.  I worry about crows (having once seen them clean out a robin's nest here, a sad and traumatic thing) but I've never seen a crow on the ground in that part of our garden; they are not interested in bees and flowers.

And the chickadees seem to trust me.  I get a good scolding when I walk by, but I tell them to simmer down, and they get back to work.  I took a chair out the other evening after dinner and watched for a while.  The forays for food come in about 10 minute intervals, and the babies are smart enough to keep their mouths shut when they are home alone. The box is perfectly quiet, even if you accidentally on purpose touch it. They know the sound of their parent's feet on the roof.

The most critical time is coming.  There is nothing more irresistible to predators than the clumsy fluffing around of fledglings.  Over the years I've seen my own cats transform into deranged, wild, yowling things at the sound of a baby bird in a bush.  Vino is long gone, and there are a couple of cats who occasionally walk through here, but I'm glad fewer people let their cats outside.  I suspect this is because they are so precious to their owners, not out of any particular concern for birds. 

A study made headlines recently, claiming that cats kill a around 2.4 billion birds and 12.3 billion mammals a year, many more than once thought.  Cat lovers argue that this is "natural behavior," but of course there's nothing "natural" about 20 cats living in one city block.

From the New York Times:

"The estimated kill rates are two to four times higher than mortality figures previously bandied about, and position the domestic cat as one of the single greatest human-linked threats to wildlife in the nation. More birds and mammals die at the mouths of cats, the report said, than from automobile strikes, pesticides and poisons, collisions with skyscrapers and windmills and other so-called anthropogenic causes."

Cake story

Last week I told John I'd bake whatever kind of cake he wanted for Father's Day.  Those were my exact words, but I lied.

He ran off to look for the Macrina Bakery Cookbook, that he thoughtfully bought for me a few weeks ago. He didn't pick carrot cake, red velvet, or even coconut.  He choose the most complicated specialty cake in the book, something called The White Chocolate Whisper Cake.  Three pages of fine print directions; two columns of ingredients.

Just reading the recipe made me tired. The cake is an egg white batter (always tricky) and in this case, mixed with melted, tempered white chocolate. The cake (if it doesn't come out flat as a pancake) is sliced evenly (ha!) brushed with lemon syrup and layered with whipped cream, fresh raspberry filling, white chocolate cream cheese frosting (1 pound of cream cheese, please) and lemon curd (made completely from scratch.)  Then topped with "a few perfect berries" and shaved white chocolate.

Some of the fussy steps involved the Bain marie,  a kitchen tool I don't own, or care to ever own.  And of course, professional cake decorating gadgets required, along with the skills to use them.

Really, I'd never seen a better recipe for an expensive flop in the home kitchen.  Just thinking about shopping for the ingredients, the stressful day of kitchen work, the big mess afterwards-- only to wind up with something that looks like it came from high school Home Ec class!  This is why the good Lord in his wisdom created professional pastry chefs.

There's a first time for everything, and now I can say I actually paid $48 for a single cake.  I picked up the phone and placed an order at Macrina Bakery for their White Chocolate Whisper Cake, and it was waiting on Saturday morning, just like magic.

How was it?  Incredibly rich, dense and fattening.  Happy Father's Day, John.

Happy Father's Day

Knight with Child, by Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale

Our family is truly blessed with wonderful dads.  Thanks all for your love, care, protection and support.  Have a great day!

Poor, but happy

The Black-capped Chickadees parents are feeding babies now in their rickety house a few feet above the ground.  When they land on the roof, I hear a high-pitched, miniature racket going off inside, almost like an electrical wire buzzing.  They must be so tiny.  Our yard is teeming with spiders, bees, flies, worms and assorted insects, so there's a steady stream of food going in.

National Geographic quality bird photography requires massive lenses on tripods and even more massive amounts of patience, but I snapped this picture from the open bedroom window by standing perfectly still for about twenty minutes.  They saw me of course, and scolded, then went about their business.  I'm sure they recognize that lady they see dragging a hose past their home every day.

By the time I fooled around cropping the pictures and playing with my ukulele, I had to get going and there wasn't time to dink with the blog.  That was my pleasant and wonderfully quiet early morning yesterday. Now that I have an iPhone, no need to turn on the local news.  When I get up, I just look up the weather and do a quick check to see if the world came to an end overnight.

So how smart are these chickadees, with crows patrolling overhead like hungry psychopaths?  I watched mom and dad flying back and forth with food, carefully taking their time to enter the nest, as all watchful bird parents do, because rushing directly in attracts predators. They know.

They can barely squeeze through the tiny opening of the box with their mouths full.  Maybe not so dumb, picking a perfect box that fits them alone?

It will still be a big relief when those babies are out. 

Rhythm and timing

My music school isn't exactly the Julliard or the Moscow Conservatory, but I still felt like a real musician when my new ukulele instructor jotted some "technical" notes on my spiral last week. He was explaining the importance of "rhythm and timing" in his lessons. 

I wasn't sure about inflicting myself on a smart, young musician, but I liked Matt. He teaches banjo, guitar and the humble ukulele-- probably to senior citizens. He looked at my pretty ukulele in an appreciative way, tuned it correctly in an instant, played a few chords and declared he liked it.  (I didn't say of course, but I think mine is nicer than his "studio" ukulele.)

Best of all, he seemed easy-going and confident I could learn to play the type of music I described.  I asked if teaching a slow study bothered him?  I've always had an inferiority complex about not being able to read music.  He laughed and assured me that he had students who were probably "much slower."  Maybe he says that to everyone, but I was flattered because we were only 10 minutes into our first lesson.  Perhaps he saw a hint of potential.

So I bravely opened my "Four Chord Songbook," from which I'd been practicing Donovan's 1960's song, Catch the Wind.   He didn't know it-- not surprising, since the song was written 30 years before he was born. That made me feel like a hippie grandma, but he was polite and gave it a try.  My simpleton book only shows chords and lyrics (assuming you already know the song by heart) so he strummed along as best he could without a score to guide him.  Finally he turned to his computer, and in a few seconds had the original song playing. There was an aha! moment (the song is in 3/4 time, not 4/4) and soon he was strumming along with Donovan.  

I have my second lesson this afternoon, and all week I've been practicing Blue Hawaii, the romantic old song Elvis made famous in the 1961 movie.  It has a nice slow tempo for all those fumbling chord changes.  If Matt hasn't heard it, he can always watch the YouTube video:

Little beauties

Adorable little Maya...

Nova makes a new friend...

Nova and Adelina giving it their best at the fishing derby this past weekend. They weren't biting.

Nova is turning into such a beauty, just like her mom.   This picture gave my heart a sweet jolt-- she looks so much like Amanda at the same age.

Amanda, age 3

A day at the races

We enjoy horse racing but don't get to the track very often, so it's nice having an excuse to drive down to Emerald Downs. My good riding buddy Dolly is a partial owner of a 4-year old racehorse named Dr. Bruce, and we went to watch him race this weekend.

Brucie had a tough season last year, but he thrilled his owners several weeks ago by winning his first race. He was entered in a $5000 claiming race, and this time the trainer bumped him up into a $7500 race.  (If you know something about Thoroughbred racing you'll understand that, but it doesn't really matter.) Suffice to say that the competition was a notch higher for Dr. Bruce this time around.

The day before we go to the track, John stops at 7-11 and buys the Daily Racing Forum, an incredibly dense "newspaper" packed with statistics, records and tips on every horse running at just about every track in the country.

Here's our winning team strategy at the track:  While John sits drinking a beer looking at Forum statistics, I run over to the paddock viewing area where the horses are saddled and paraded before the next race starts. My incredibly astute equine instincts :-) and gut reaction tells me which horses look especially good that day.

They must be alert and frisky, but not goofing off and wasting energy.  They should be spirited but not acting stupid.  Their feet should look like they are dancing on air and have big springs attached to their hind legs.  They are looking ahead instead of gawking around. Above all, they have that fire in their eye that says they can't wait to RUN.

So, I pick my winning hunches, then dash back to the stands and ask John, "What do you think of that number 3 or 7?"  Depending on the horse's past record and "insider" tips he has gleaned from the Forum, he will say, "I'd go with 3."

Then I rush up to the betting window and stand in line with all sorts of unsavory characters. I place a wimpy, poor-odds bet. Which is usually something like:  Put $5 on number 3 horse to show. 

Then number 3 horse comes in first (he really did!) and I start kicking myself because I didn't bet $100 to win.  So the afternoon passes quickly in this entertaining way.

And then the big moment arrived. Dr. Bruce on his way to the paddock for the 6th race of the day.

And the call, "Riders up!"  I was excited being in the paddock for the first time-- it's great to have an insider friend at the track. Thanks, Dolly.

And now you're wondering, how did Dr. Bruce do?

He finished dead last.  Oh well.  You can't win them all.  There's always that next time. And nothing can beat an afternoon at the track, just horsing around with good friends.

Friends Joe, Dolly, Rene and Carol

Cute

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology says this on their web page:  The Black-capped Chickadee is a bird almost universally considered “cute” thanks to its over-sized round head, tiny body, and curiosity about everything.  

In other words, they look like human babies!  No wonder we like them. Chickadees are friendly, and they seem to like hanging around watching people. They also make lots of cute noises.  I was working outside a couple of weeks ago, and a chickadee flew out of this birdhouse right over my head. I thought, that's not a good idea, kiddo.  It's just a flimsy old ornamental "chair" about 3 feet high, and unsuitable for a safe nest in any way, shape or form. Flying predators have the yard under surveillance and the occasional cat strolls through.  But the chickadee just flew a few feet away and then looked me right in the eye.  I told her to think carefully about it.  

Well, they didn't listen and went ahead and built a nest in there.  Now I can sometimes see her tiny round face and beady eyes peering out, so I assume she's sitting on eggs. I'm trying to avoid the area-- and it gives me gives an excuse to put off weeding that bed.

Even though the chair is useless, whoever built the birdhouse tacked on top must have drilled the hole precisely right for chickadees.  It's too small for house sparrows, and besides, they're too smart to pick a nest site that dumb. I guess that's why there are hundreds of house sparrows on every city block in Seattle, and not so many chickadees.

Little June miracles

Roses outside a bedroom window...

Fred Meyer bargain geraniums, turning out much redder than you expected...


Old fragrant jasmines, wintered over again by some climatic miracle. (Or just global warming.)

The alliums covered with busy bees...

And a sweet smell at the back door.

Happy Birthday

Dreams of Strawberry Moon

Michael Rock

In American folklore, the full moon in June is called the strawberry moon because strawberry-picking season reaches its peak. In the 1930s, the Farmer's Almanac began to publish "Indian" full moon names. The Europeans called it the rose moon, while other cultures named it the hot moon for the beginning of the summer heat.

Happy birthday to my friend Julie G.  You always remember my birthday and I'm sorry that yours sometimes slips by.  But now I have Siri to help me remember these things!  Lets get caught up soon over a bowl of Pho.