Musings

It's been awhile since I last posted some thoughts here. I've been busy…sort of. I wake up early enough to do some writing but I don't because I feel somewhat rushed; we now have some serious walking on our schedule. We're on the road by 7 each morning and making our way into Chico so that we can walk in Bidwell Park; a gem among parks nationwide. We park over by Annie's Glen, a section of the park named for Annie Bidwell, the benefactress that gave us this wonderful park. From here we can take the new subway under Mangrove Blvd.

and make our way to One Mile, where the loop trail begins. Until 8:30, the park allows dogs to be off leash and so we have to keep an eye out for those dogs that are less than well behaved while we make our way up the road to Cedar Grove where we will turn around with two miles of good walking behind us and then make our way back. We don't have to return on the same path and sometimes we will cross over the creek and come back on the north side trail which will allow us to walk by the municipal pool created by damming the creek. Sometimes, if we are lucky, we will see a trout among the few swimmers that brave the cold temperatures of the pool. Then we cut across at the dam and we're back at our car about an hour and ten minutes after we left. Four miles walked in that amount of time is sufficient to give us a good workout and we've been doing it religiously.

Along our way, I've been noticing the scraps of sycamore bark that litter the sides of the trail. Sycamore trees are constantly shedding this thin bark as they grow and during the summer months they will shed even more as they swell with the large amounts of water they have taken in. And I noticed that the bark scraps have interesting shapes and textures, so I have begun collecting the ones that catch my eye. Once I have them home, I have been painting them with an acrylic wash in various 'never seen in nature' colors. I'm not sure of what I'm going to do with them but I have some ideas floating around.

The addition of bags filled with colored bark to my 'studio' space has created even more clutter. More than I'm comfortable with but what can I do? The house is still for sale (no lookers yet) and there's no sense in remodeling my garage studio. Though I do have thoughts about our new and not seen house; we really want to have a space where we can consolidate our computer space with our art space. Yes, they go together. And the space will be inside and not in a cold/hot garage.

Here at home and in the here and now, I have a garden to deal with. It's starting to mature and I picked out first tomato the other day. I know most gardeners have seen their first tomatoes some weeks ago; I got a late start…what can I say? There's also some zucchini, cucumbers, carrots, bell peppers in various hues, wax peppers and Ancho chilies for Rellenos.

Out in the orchard we have prunes that are just about ready to pick. The tree is groaning under the weight of them. And I should mention the olive trees as they have a great crop coming as well. The rest of the various fruit trees are empty now. But the walnut trees are also bending with the weight of their crop. We have 5 walnut trees which is about 4-1/2 trees too many. Those are harvested in late September and what a mess that is! We don't spray our walnuts and so a great number of the nuts are infested with the offspring of some sort of walnut loving moth. You can usually spot the infested nuts and throw them away before they make it to the cracking table…but not always! I really hate cracking a likely looking walnut, one that I'm planning on eating, only to find a fat worm sitting inside.

I also have a fine crop of gourds out in the garden, but I am hoping that we will be gone, our house sold, when they are ready to be harvested next April. But nothing much is being sold these days. Our realtor came over last week with a young lady that has a business that films a house and then puts it up on the internet as a 'Virtual Home Tour'. She filmed it all in about thirty minutes. We saw a preview the next morning and now our house is being seen by thousands…maybe millions of would be customers! Have we had any responses so far? Not!

Later today…we did the walk as expected and it was fine. Grand, to tell the truth! The temperature was just right and so we went an extra quarter mile. And that was where we saw an interesting event unfold. A couple was walking with their dogs (no leash) when a cyclist approached. One of the dogs wandered out in front of the cyclist who braked in time and then said…'Why don't you leash that blank dog?' or something to that effect. The dog owner quickly replied that he didn't have leash the dogs till 8:30…so there! Of course no thought was given to the safety of the dog. A leash would have prevented this incident altogether. And the cyclist was also in the wrong for not giving warning of her approach; A bell or even a verbal warning. Unfortunately, Chico has some of the worst bicycle riders in the…state? Nation? World? Take your pick, Chico riders qualify.

On the way back to the car we passed by the pool and it was being cleaned for the weekend crowd. We also saw one trout left behind in the shallows near the dam. He'll be fine once they release the creek to flow back into the pool.

After coming home it was time to mow the orchard and then to get in some pool time of my own. Aah!

With all of that said…why aren't I commenting on the world scene more often. I used to post something every few hours. I seem to have lost my appetite for it. It might have something to do with all of the drugs I'm taking and that wouldn't surprise me. Now that I'm within a month or so of attaining the ripe old age of 70, I find myself taking more pills for more conditions; conditions that I didn't have a year ago. I remarked to my wife the other day that you really need to be as fit as possible when entering 'old age'. Aging isn't for wimps!

Anyway…I guess I will post here when I feel like it from now on and not a moment sooner. In the meantime I'm going to keep myself busy with my art because it's far more pleasant than the political scene.