My wild kingdom life continues. Two mule deers munched on jojoba plants in our backyard outside our fence last week for a few hours. There wasn’t much left of one jojoba when they were done.
I was fascinated and managed to stand a few yards away — on my side of the fence. At one point the buck jumped and it looked like he’d run away. But instead, he froze and the pair didn’t seem to think I was a threat. The buck had small antlers that were narrow. You can barely make them out in the photos.
I took the photo above with my Nikon. I had trouble with the camera, because the mulies would be partially behind shrubs and the with camera on auto, focused on the plant life, leaving the mule deers blurry. This was the only decent photo I got.
Here are a few more photos and a video from my iphone:
Here are the mulies munching on jojoba. There’s a good view of the buck’s antlers.
I sat myself down on a bench opposite the deer and watched feeling the peace of nature. What a blessing during Advent to experience this beauty.
The Gift of Christmas Poet: Catherine Pulsifer
Family and friends gathered near, Laughter and love so warm, sincere. May the joy of Christmas Day, Guide your heart in every way.
Remember those who face the cold, Whose stories often go untold. Extend a hand, share what you can, For love unites the hearts of man.
This is a wreath I made years ago when we lived in Palm Springs. It’s on our front gate. This week, I’m decorating my tree, hanging wreaths and having fun getting ready for my kids and DIL’s visit.
The wreath was placed on our big wooden gates when we lived in Palm Springs.
I noticed a few decorations on my daily walk. Here they are:
I’m not sure if these are mice or polar bears. Any guesses?
I love saguaros with Santa hats.
They look good on Beavergtail cacti too.
I got this Rockin’ Santa from Target in 1999. He’s a joy to bring out each Christmas season. He dances to Brenda Lee’s “Rockin Around the Christmas Tree.”
Our first Christmas in Arizona was about a week after we moved. I didn’t decorate. The next year we rented a house in Santa Barbara for our family. The year after that, we stayed in our old Palm Springs neighborhood. Needless to say, I didn’t put up a tree at home. My Rockin’ Santa was the extent of my decorations, plus the wreath on the gate.
I decided to put up the tree this year because the kids are coming. But I couldn’t find my Christmas box containing our married life of ornaments. I looked high and low. I emptied out the guest room closet. I searched the garage which has nice storage cupboards. I looked everywhere.
It hurt my heart that I no longer had our eclectic collection of ornaments that included ones made by my kids in second, third and fourth grades. I had ornaments given as gifts through the decades from my mom and friends. Nothing matched but it all worked and was special to us.
I was relieved to find our Christmas stockings safely tucked away in my bin of gift wrap. My friend in Santa Barbara made them for us, plus I still have the stocking my grandmother knitted for my first Christmas!
Somehow our Christmas ornaments didn’t make the move from Palm Springs to Arizona. The wreaths were stored in the same spot as the Christmas box, which is odd.
A strange thing happened during our move. The movers’ truck wasn’t big enough. They had to rent a separate U-Haul and the nearest one available was in San Diego. That was due to everyone moving out of California during COVID. People were not moving into the state, so U-Hauls were in short supply.
We left for Arizona and the movers promised to catch up with us the next day. We left before the movers had everything packed. Good thing we bought all the furniture in the casita — so we didn’t have to sleep on the floor!
Do you decorate for holidays? Do you keep it to a minimum or do you go all out?
Harris hawks hanging out on an Agave behind the tree in our backyard on New Year’s Eve.
I feel like I’m emerging from 11 days of cocooning. I’m not quite a butterfly yet, but I can breathe and stretch my wings after a nasty bug that kept me in bed.
The day is bright and sunny. Absolutely stunning. The past few days have been cloudy and my weather app said air quality wasn’t good.
Here’s a clear view of the perch the hawks enjoyed on New Year’s Eve. Look at that sky!
At one point, there were five Harris hawks hanging out together.
During my cocoon phase, I listened to an outstanding book. Ann Patchett’s “Tom Lake.” It was published August 2023. I enjoy reading books the old fashioned way with paper pages and spines. However, because I was laying in bed with my eyes closed, propped up on pillows for my deep cough, I chose listening to an audiobook.
Meryl Streep was the reader! I could distinguish characters, not by a big change in her voice, but by subtle rhythms and intonations. I believe her reading added to the book so the experience was better than it would have been if I had held the book in my hands and used my eyes.
Here’s a summary from Amazon:
In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers.
“Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature.” —The Guardian
In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family’s orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.
amazon.com
I have one major question in the story that wasn’t resolved after going to back to re-listen to certain chapters. I won’t ask that question here, because it’s a spoiler. I’m waiting for someone else to read the book so we can discuss. I wonder if Patchett left this question unanswered on purpose?
Here’s a 10-second video of the hawks leaving my yard:
Hawks.
Do you like listening to audiobooks, using a reader or old-fashioned books?
Have you read “Tom Lake?” If so, what are your thoughts?
Every year, for as long as I can remember during my married life, I’ve helped my husband with Holiday cards and small gifts of appreciation for his clients. I add that to my personal cards and friends and family gifts.
I enjoyed when my daughter was in high school and helped me with this project because two hands are better than one!
I’ll never forget one year in the Palm Springs post office, when the postal worker asked me to re-label my stack of Frango Mints to save money on mailing. My daughter and I wrote new labels as fast as we could, and the postal worker was ringing them up and punching into her computer. We actually had teamwork going and it didn’t slow down the process at all for those waiting behind us. It looked like it did — because of us filling out new labels — but in reality it took no more time. The postal worker was moving as fast as she could and she hadn’t caught up to our new labeling.
But the comments and cursing I heard that day! My daughter had my back and defended us loudly to those behind us. I was afraid one impatient person was going to come to blows with us. Or my daughter would get into a fight defending me.
I’ve made friends with our postal workers in Carefree (like I did for 30 years in Palm Springs) and gave them their own box of Frangos. This will be my second year of overwhelming the small Carefree post office with packages. They’ve told me to never come in on Mondays and what hours are best. I’ve also learned to come in on multiple days with no more than ten to a dozen boxes. It may take a few more trips, but I understand how people in line get annoyed at having to wait.
I’ve never had a bad experience with a postal worker. Just the people waiting behind me.
I used to order gifts online with addresses and let the company do the labeling and mailing. I sent a delicious strudel from a Seattle bakery. But then my husband would get calls that the packaging came with the wrong names, etc. It’s easier to do it myself and get it right. Also, people all love Frangos, so I’ve given up on trying something new.
Thankfully, the gift giving in our family has gotten smaller. It’s been getting together that’s most important.
So what are Frangos?
My sweet memory of Frangos goes back to shopping with Mom in downtown Seattle. We’d go to the old-fashioned department store Frederick and Nelson, which had one floor dedicated to fabrics and notions, one for housewares, one for toys and children’s clothing, etc. At the end of our trip we’d have lunch at the counter and finish the day off with one Frango mint each.
What gift giving traditions do you continue during the holidays?
How often do you see impatient people at the Post Office in December?Would you groan standing behind me in line?
For New Year’s Eve, my husband and I indulged with burgers and fries at Big Earl’s Greasy Eats.
What’s in a name? We’ve driven by Big Earl’s Greasy Eats for two years. Finally, we took the plunge and ordered the Big Earl Burgers and fries to take home.
They were just as delicious as a place named Greasy Eats promised. But then I felt sick for the rest of the day. Too much food (or grease) that I ate too fast. I couldn’t eat again for that day.
This was my burger and fries from Big Earl’s.
While we were celebrating Christmas with the family, we cooked and mostly ate in the VRBO. One of the special dishes I liked was roasted vegetables cooked by one of my son’s fiancee’s sisters. It was so delicious I made it at home.
Brussels sprouts, onions, garlic, sweet potatoes, bell peppers and carrots tossed in olive oil with fresh rosemary. Roasted in the oven at 400 degrees about 45 minutes.
The roasted veggies made me feel so much better than the burger and fries!
What are your favorite things to cook or what do you like most when you dine out?
We boarded Olive the cat for our vacation in Palm Springs. I got a call from the boarding place three days into our trip. Olive wasn’t drinking, eating, peeing or pooping.
It’s the first time she’s been at this boarding place, because the one we went to before closed. I was impressed with this new outfit. It was spanking brand new, had huge two and three level kitty suites complete with climbing towers and TVs! Cats can climb up and down through the suite through large holes cut in the platform levels.
I had left Olive with her Rx laxative, kitty soup and dry Friskies. She even had an old smelly t-shirt of my husband’s to make her comfortable. After a few phone calls, the boarding place said they’d take Olive to the vet if she didn’t settle down. They also put her in an empty bathroom, where she’d be all alone.
Our Olive isn’t exactly neurotic, but she’s a loner and trembles and gets frightened of new people and places. You’d think having a friend take care of her in our house would be the ideal situation rather than boarding her. But no, you’d be wrong. As long as my friend’s daughter took care of Olive she was fine when we lived in Palm Springs. The friend’s daughter got scared of Marco — our homeless guy who believed our house was his — so her dad took over Olive duty.
Olive doesn’t like strangers, but really doesn’t like men. The end result of the father taking care of Olive was a urinary tract infection — plus me purchasing two new comforters, sheets and mattress toppers.
I got a call five days into our trip that Olive was doing fine.
Now for the embarrassing part.
On our way home we stopped at the boarding place to pick up Olive.
They gave me her meds, foods and handed me her soft carrier. I insisted it was not the right one. Hers was black, I swore — and the one they tried to pawn off on my was gray with blue piping.
I had four frantic employees opening up every cupboard shelf searching for the black-sided carrier.
Finally, 25 minutes later, we came to the agreement that I’d take Olive home in their hard cased carrier and they’d deliver Olive’s carrier to our house once they figured out what happened to it. Maybe it went home with the wrong cat? Maybe the manager who was trying out new spaces to make Olive comfortable had placed it in a safe place?
Once home I decided to check on Amazon for my purchase of the carrier. This is what I discovered:
I had bought a gray carrier with light blue piping. Not black. I bit the bullet and called and apologized for being totally insane and a pain in the behind. Then I had to drive over there and exchange carriers and apologize profusely.
I realized my error. Waffles the pug and his carrier I bought six years ago. This is what I thought Olive the cat had too. She doesn’t get out much and Waffles get in his carrier daily.
Waffles the pug in 2016 with his black carrier.
Here’s to a New Year and sanity! What are your hopes for 2023?
