Worthy Projects

The Community Advisory Committee (it advocates for the Point with the County by mission, but also works with other agencies whose work affects life here on the Point) met last night with the goal of discussing possible funding mechanisms for what were described as 'three worthy projects.'  These included the necessary repairs to the Community Center, the renovation of the Julius Firehall for a new library, and the production of a lighthouse at Lighthouse Point.  Each will ultimately involve costs of about a half million dollars.

The discussion part never mentioned the Community Center repairs and I had thought that the Parks Board had developed a plan for that which would not, at least currently, involve seeking either new taxes or an additional levy.   Nevertheless, it does seem to me that the community ought to be prepared to cover maintenance costs for the main community building in Point Roberts via the tax system.  But that is not going to happen now.  So people who resist having taxes pay for anything can sleep well in their beds.

Indeed, all three projects involve funding outside of raising taxes.  There are private institutions that provide grants, there are private donors, there is grassroots' fundraising, and, to a small degree, there are government agencies that provide funds for such projects (e.g., restoration of historical buildings).

Unfortunately, the discussion seemed to drift into peoples' feeling that the projects were not the projects they wanted, sort of.  One discussant pointed out that, although he had no data, he felt the price tag of renovations for the Firehall was too high.  Thanks for sharing, was my inner response.  Another voice urged thinking 'out of the box,' and suggested putting the library in Baker Field.   Not exactly a vital location for a community library, I'd say, but definitely out of the box.  Way out of the box.  Someone expressed the view that the new library would be just the same as the old library and we would be out a half million.  However, when asked whether she had looked at the architectural plans, her reply was a succinct, 'No.'  And with an implied 'and I have no plans to do so.'

The Lighthouse Project simply presented its status and its plans.  Nobody objected, at least.

The most useful information of the evening was that the Point Roberts PREP group (which encompasses both the Food Bank and Emergency Preparedness) is currently using the Julius Firehall as a storage site for its supplies.  Obviously, if the Library project is to proceed, some other storage will need to be found for them.  

Given that my focus and interests are largely on the Library Improvement Project, I can't exactly conclude that it was an evening well spent, but maybe just hearing these dissenting voices will tell me something that I need to know.  Or, maybe not.

Point Roberts Coastal Photos, Second Round

Do you remember July?  I am thinking about this partly because it was snowing today, first snow of the season.  And I was thinking what a long time ago it was hot and sunny and green and July.  And indeed it was.

It was also back in July when Ed and two of his photographer friends re-shot the coast of Point Roberts for the 'Point Roberts Coastal Photo Project.'  He and our granddaughter, Gianna, did this the first time two years ago.  It was always his plan to re-do it at a future time, and in July, when it was hot and sunny, he did it, but the granddaughter wasn't available this time because she had other plans for her life right then.

However, now that the summer has gone and the winter has arrived, the second set of photos are up.  Actually, the second and third, because this time, Ed flew two rounds, one at 600 feet and one at 300 feet.  Here is the link to all three sets of photos, 2008 and 2010.

If you have any questions or comments, I have re-opened the comments sections on this blog, or you can write to me at the email address on the front page of the blog.  Our thanks to Anne and John who not only took all the photos, but also spent a lot of time in post-photo-taking to get these all organized.  And to Gianna, who showed the way.  And my thanks to Ed, who spent a lot of time getting this all coordinated, from the original flights to the web presentation.

Strange Arrival

This afternoon, about five p.m., I walked into the back yard and, simultaneously, a very big bird flew out of a neighbor's tree and landed on our back fence. Very surprised by it's action, it's size, and it's position on the top of the fence, some fifteen yards ahead of me, I quickly realized that I was looking at a large-ish owl. His back was turned toward me, but he repeatedly turned his face toward me, so I was pretty sure he knew I was there. And he sat there.

I went into the house to get my camera, and when I got back outside, he was still there on top of the fence. I took a few pictures, though he was too far away for my (inadequate) zoom to record much of an image.

I went back inside, and about forty minutes later, I went out again and he was still there though now on the trunk of a tree. Around 6:15, Ed came home, and by then he had moved out on a branch of that same tree. Ed, a better photographer than I, and the possessor of a better camera, took this second photo. For about an hour, the owl posed and presented his many excellent angles to Ed, who put a larger version of this photo up on Flickr in his "Somewhere in Point Roberts" set.

By 8 p.m., he was gone. The bird is a barred owl, of course, and a regular inhabitant of these parts, but I'd never seen one before so close or for so long. Thanks,owl, for the opportunity!

Banking On It

It's been a while since I reported on the status of Sterling bank, one of our two local banks.  For the past few months, it really looked as if it were about to join the company of the 110 or so banks that have failed in 2010, its deposits to be taken over by some other bank or made good by the FDIC.  Although there was some rescue work reported, that effort seemed to have come a cropper.  Sterling's stock price continued to fall, its volume sales were erratic, the private equity firm that was apparently going to provide some of the capital it needed seemed to be joined by no one else able to make a sufficient increase in the bank's capital.

And then this week, a turnaround.  Of course, the turnaround in Sterling Financial's fortunes came at the expense of someone: in this case, its current share holders and then also the rest of us taxpayers.  Two private equity firms plus a few dozen smaller investors came up with over 700 million dollars and the bank returned to them about four billion shares of stock.  Which means that the current stock holders proportionate share of the company's value/earning was significantly lowered. 


And also, the U.S. Treasury Department had a little of the action.  Back in the grim Fall/Winter of 2008, Sterling got a bundle of money ($300 million plus) from the government which was converted to preferred shares.  This week, the agreement with the feds was to convert those preferred shares into common stock, now worth much less.  The Treasury, i.e. to say the taxpayers, took a $227 million dollar loss in this agreement. Of course, it would have been a bigger loss if the bank had failed and the FDIC had had to take on the costs of converting the bank PLUS the Treasury to lose all its investment in Sterling from the TARP program.  Sterling may well be rescued now, although it remains a penny stock, its current price around sixty cents per share.

I guess I can safely renew my check supply, though.

Spend That Money!

Meg, from the All Point Bulletin, says we want trails.  Well, she doesn't say that's what we want, she says that's what the people at the Community Advisory meeting said they wanted. 

Maybe we didn't go to the same meeting.  Certainly there was some considerable talk about putting culverts in the ditches on a couple of streets and then, ideally, covering over the ditches with some kind of walking/biking surface.  And certainly Chairperson Reber is enthusiastic about doing that on Benson and on a couple of other roads.  Nevertheless, what seemed to me to be the underlying themes of the meeting were 'we're frightened, and we need life to be safer in Point Roberts' and 'we're lonely (or un/under-employed) and we need to give tourists more to do in Point Roberts so that more tourists will come to Point Roberts.'

People kept saying that something had to be done because it was so dangerous to walk or ride bikes on the streets here.  Although some other people said that compared to the bike riding they had done prior to coming to Point Roberts, they had never had such safe riding conditions as they had here.  Some people said that the traffic on Gulf was so fast (average speed: 34 mph in a 25 mph zone) that it was only a matter of time until someone was killed or badly injured.  Some people said that the traffic on Benson was so bad because of the narrow shoulders that it was only a matter of time until someone was killed or badly injured.  And also, the RV park down on Marine, I believe, was said to involve such dangerous walking out into the street practices that it is only a matter of time until someone is killed or badly injured.  The parking lot located across the street from the church?  Only a matter of time, and here you go to the chorus.  I almost forgot to mention the dangers of Goodman Road.

So I guess we're all nervous wrecks about the dangers of living in Point Roberts.  It's a wonder we live here, considering how dangerous it is.  The most recent injury I know of from traffic problems was Marco on a bicycle and the deer.  Maybe we should be getting rid of the deer in Point Roberts.

On the other hand, though, we could be using that money to build some kind of entertainment system for tourists.  (This was mostly about bike lanes/bike markings/bike racks/bike lockers.)  With these amenities, people could ride their bikes through the border, thus eliminating the lineup difficulties and spend vast numbers of dollars (collectively) in Point Roberts, thus perking up the economy.  Eco-Bicycling: an economic development plan.

I didn't hear anyone suggest that they just save the money for a rainy day.  It may be that telling people they have access to $386,000 dollars for traffic/roads improvement inevitably brings out their consumerist side.  Maybe I've been here too long and thus am jaded.  Nevertheless, it seems to me that we're safe enough and there are already enough tourists here and Point Roberts is unlikely ever to have a lively domestic economy and this money reminds me of The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg, by Mark Twain.  Well, I doubt if corruption is what is in store for us, but I also doubt that whatever this money eventually goes to will make us either safer or richer. 

And the speed limit on Gulf?  Maybe raise it to 30 mph? 

Addendum: You might think it would be worth painting new lines on the roads to spruce up the currently disappearing lines.  But it turns out that there is a national shortage of street line paint, and thus, new paint lines are unavailable.  The triumph of capitalism, or something. 

90 CD's Later

So, on Thursday, I addressed this daunting pile of CD's and decided to deal only with the first 150 of them.  As it turned out, selecting 125 to go away into a new life, leaving 25 to, more or less, stay with me (e.g., six Alasdair Fraser CD's will probably get turned over to a granddaughter who's a fan) was pretty easy.  Most of those 125 I distinctly remembered, if only in terms of the circumstances under which I had bought them, but I could also sense pretty quickly whether I was likely to play them again or wish that I had access to them.  Thus, into a bag they went for the Saturday Farmer's Market, with a little looseness in the sense of what constitutes a farmer.

I checked with a daughter who knows more about retail and resale than I do and she advised that one can easily buy used CD's for $2, so if anyone actually wanted one of mine, they would probably easily pay $1.  And there was the pricing decision.  It seemed surely all profit since whatever I had paid for these CD's in the past, I had certainly gotten that much entertainment from them.

Then, I decided to have a second line of goods: flower seeds.  I had been collecting seeds over the past few weeks from columbine and lupine.  Now, I bought 100 little plastic closable bags (2x2 inches each) and put 1/2 teaspoon of seeds in each of 30 bags (about 20 columbine and 10 lupine) and decided to sell them for a quarter, although the amount of time it took to gather and shell the lupine seed meant that if I sold them all, I'd have been working for about fifty cents an hour.  On the other hand, 1/2 t. of columbine seeds amounts to hundreds of seeds, but only a couple dozen of lupine.

And this morning, I took myself to the ever-more-sparsely populated parking lot at the Community Center.  Today, there was one seller of plants, a jeweller, a graphic artist, two or three flea market-type dealers, a lemonade-and-cookie stand, a purveyor of fancy water bottles, a large table of nature photographs/cards, and three farmers with berries and vegetables of various kinds and colors, including blackberries for $2.00 (small basket).  And me with my CD's. 

The customers were pretty steady from nine until about 11 or 11:30.  Then they thinned out, and by 12:30, the customers and the sellers were all gone. 

But, the day gave me all I had wanted.  First, I got to swell the number of sellers at the Market, if only by one.  Second, I got over NINETY CD's and 15 seed packages moved happily into someone else's life (and all those dollars moved into mine) .  Third, I got to talk with a number of visitors to and residents of (friends and new acquaintances)  Point Roberts.  And I used some of my ill gotten gains to buy a nice bowl of coleus plants.  Altogether, a very nice morning in Point Roberts!

One Hundred Things

I was reading around somewhere on the Net the other day about a lady who had come to a crisis in her life.  You know that this was a U.S. lady because the crisis was all about having too many things.  Whatever occasioned it, she ended up deciding to re-rig her life so that it contained only 100 objects.  And now, of course, she's writing a book about it.  And when the book is published, she will have 101 things and will have to throw something out to make room for the book.

It's hard to imagine what there is for her to write about other than the fact of it.  You live with whatever you've got to live with.  On the other hand, my first response to her noting that she had retained three pairs of shoes was, "Would that be three things or six things?"  I mean, there are a lot of definitional problems that would have to be addressed and, although it would be interesting to solve that problem, I doubt whether it would be interesting to read about it.  Thus, is silverware one thing?  Or an infinite number of things, depending on the size of your silverware set?  If you are going for simplicity, surely one of each (knife, fork, spoon) should be adequate, and maybe getting a spork would cut it down to just two pieces accounting for silverware, one item.

Or maybe not.  One hundred things is doubtless possible for a life, although it would be a life in which you didn't do anything very complex: no fancy quilting, woodworking, cooking or baking, I'd guess.  I probably have a hundred things just in two or three kitchen drawers and I use them all the time.

But there are a lot of things we have, I have, that I don't use all the time and that are very numerous indeed.  Because we are moving out of our other house up in British Columbia, the disposing of stuff is much on my mind.  Lots of it is already gone.  But this past weekend, I was addressing the problem of CD's.  Somehow, between us, Ed and I, we have amassed, over the years that CD's have been with us, maybe 500 hundred of them.  We definitely are not listening to all that music.  In fact, we probably listen to fewer than a dozen of them in any given month, and fewer than thirty of them are residing in our computers for IPod  listening.

So, I decided to try the 100 item limit on CD's.  And I am going through them carefully.  Each one goes either into the pile of go or the pile of keep.  And at the end of the sort, if there are more than a hundred in the pile of keep, there will be another sorting of that pile until it is down to one hundred.  And a double disk CD counts for two items.

And then I'm going to take all those excess but excellent CD's to the Saturday Farmer's Market this weekend to see if someone else would like to take them on, or at least some of them on, for a tiny fraction of their original price.  And then I'll know what it's like to live with only 100 CD's.  And after that, maybe it would be worth trying to get down to three pairs of shoes?  Well, maybe not something that hard for a second act.  But I promise I won't turn it into a book.

Do me a favor; take these CD's off my hands.  Saturday.  9 a.m.  Community Center.  A price that is a mere token.

Hydrangea Care

I have a lot of hydrangeas in my yard, all but one of them coming from a single bush.  (The odd-bush out is, of course, the white one which grows in a big pot and doesn't seem to mind.)  I don't provide them with any special care and I'm a confused pruner when it comes to hydrangeas, so they tend toward odd shapes but always to abundant blooms. They're a plant I really have respect for.

Fortunately, and especially in August, hydrangeas are very easy to root from green cuttings, so next year I hope to have even more of them.  Point Roberts ought to be advertised as the Hydrangea Capital of the World, I think (like Petaluma being the Chicken Capital of the World, and Castroville being the Artichoke Capital of the World).  I've never seen such abundant hydrangeas.  Because the soil is so acidic here, they tend toward the blue kind, but some approach a gorgeous purple and there are occasional pink ones to be seen.  And obviously people could manipulate that more if they were so inclined to if they changed the soil acidity.  For information about changing color, try this site.

It does seem to me (in my ceaseless search for a nonexistent economic development plan for Point Roberts) that if there is any economic development to be found here, it will be in hydrangeas.  We have a lot of them, they are of superb quality, they don't exist grow easily or at all everywhere in the U.S.  They don't, however, always come with chartreuse frogs. The down side is that there aren't a lot of uses for them other than as flowers, live and dried.  What we need is research to discover that hydrangeas could be the source of an amazing medicinal product.  Then, we're talking full home-business development.

Now, the down side even of live flower hydrangea use is that, if you cut them and put them in water, they are very likely to be wilted within a few hours.  This, I am told, is because the plant puts out a sap to prevent water loss.  Thus, when you cut their stems, the sap immediately seals the stem and it can't get to the water you have obligingly put in its vase.  The answer to this is boiling water.  It seems like plant cruelty, but it works beautifully.  Cut the hydrangea stalk (in the green area, not the hardened brown/grey section) and put it in tap water.  Then put it in water you've just brought to a boil and let it sit in the hot water for about half an hour.  Then put it back in the tap/cool water/vase.  If, after 3 or 4 days it begins to wilt, you can repeat this (recut the stem) and it will likely liven back up.  However, you can't do it indefinitely.  So few solutions to anything work forever, of course.  Hydrangeas do not make us feel blue, but they certainly tell us what blue looks like
 Update:  For information on rooting hydrangeas.

Saturday Market, Act III

This past Saturday, the big B.C. day weekend, featured a market even thinner than the previous week.  I fret about this because it seems such a good idea, but it will clearly take some time for it to really work and I fear people will lose their interest.  Like so many good ideas that fail to come to fruition, it will wither and end with a whimper.  The thing is, there aren't, at the moment, enough farmers here to stock an every other Saturday market.  Although, giving credit, the two tables with edible stuff were well-stocked.  

And having arts and craft people and flea market folks add to the mix is great, but it may not be possible for the crafters to be putting together that much supply without a six month notice.  (I speak here with some experience with the quilting group and the Christmas Craft fair.)  Maybe the library ought to bring out a table with its excess books for sale (or just wheel some of the carts out?) to add to the mix?  How about selling/trading used CD's?
 

In any case, it would be better if the Saturday market didn't look like it ought to be (unsuccessfully) filling up the entire Community Center parking lot.  The first one had the Fire Department doing some kind of bicycle safety program and that took up a bunch of space and added a bunch of people to the environs.  Alas, the second two have not had anything to go with them other than the fact that the library is open on Saturday, which is a good combo feature, but not enough.


Unfortunately, the dog show is the day after the next Saturday market, although it's possible that the dog show needed to have access to the community center hallway (they used it last year when it was a little shower-y) and that might not work so well on the day that library is open.  Oh, it's frustrating!  At the first market, Ed sold his postcard/photos, but he felt he had to have something different to go back.  I've been thinking about how we could fill up a table with something!  I've been gathering seeds from spent flowers all week, so maybe little plastic bags with plantable seeds?  I've got about a cup of tiny columbine seeds, and that would go a long way, but it is just columbine seeds (although I also have lupine seeds).  Spend the day before the market gathering blackberries and then offer them to somebody else since I have more than enough of them?  But doesn't everybody have more than enough of them?

Marco, who was shepherding the initial steps of the market, ran into a deer this past week while riding his bicycle and with broken bones is probably not at the top of his game right now.  So, clap for Tinker Bell, is about all I have to offer.  Plus these pictures of the most recent market.

The Green Room Grows

The Green Room at the back of my house has now grown to about 20 feet by 30 feet.  And my exhaustion is considerable since I had to remove almost everything that was growing there before I could make any headway or even make a plan.

To my surprise, the tin can sculpture just took off, despite the fact that I've been ready to do it for several years but just never got around to drilling holes in all those cans.  It looks here a little like a small war memorial, I suspect, but it's actually more of a monument to canned tomatoes,.  Some of the cans are actually rusted, but some are still shiny and the contrast between the two is nice.  I had thought the 'stalks' might move slightly in a breeze, but they are way too heavy (the tallest 'stalk' is about 4 feet or so).

I've surrounded the sculpture with saltillo tiles (neither they nor the marble slabs are leveled or set in; they are just sitting on whatever uneven surface was there when I got them to the site).  I have no idea what the future of a saltillo tile is since they are now outdoors and they were made to be indoors.  But I guess we'll just see how that works.  There's a little sun in this area around noon, so the lettuce (on the right in the photo above) appreciates a little but not too much summer warmth.

Here is the view from the east.  A couple of years ago, I found a? some? bedsprings at the side of Gulf Road down by the Grange Hall.  It appeared to have been doubled back on itself and then run over repeatedly by a sizable truck.  I dragged it home because it was so interesting, and it has now found itself a spot on the fence (center).  The small hydrangea I transplanted has kept its blooms (it was a very quick transplant) and is now just to the left of the sculpture.

The white marble tiles provide a walkway somewhat to the left of center of the entire space.  Just at the left edge of the photo are a bunch of lunaria, evening primrose, and candytuft plants...just things i happened to have around that could be easily moved.  And feverfew in pots at the back.  When I sit in that chair, looking east, this is what I see to the south/to my right.

A bunch of alpine iris and some foxgloves on the left side of the metal wall and the rock, which needs some companion rocks, but that will take some more time to gather.  I started some needle-point ivy cuttings to root today and hope to train them on to the metal wall.  So far, I've spent about $8 on all this, which went for three 1/4"-rods for the sculpture.  Such a pleasant way to entertain one's self, "lazing on a Sunday [sunny] afternoon..In the summertime" as the Loving Spoonful said or sang, or at least I think it was them.  [Of course, it wasn't the Loving Spoonful: it was The Kinks.]

Worrying

The All Point Bulletin for August came to our mail box yesterday and we were unusually taken by the letters section.  Among the usual thanks for whatever happened recently, there was a long (and edited for length) letter which urged the end of anonymous complaints and particularly the unspecified ones against the writer; a letter from someone who thinks that yard waste burning should be conducted during the dry season (when its prohibited) when the yard waste is completely dry rather than in the other 10 months of the year when it rains and the yard waste is damp, at best; and a worrying letter (third letter from the top) from a sort of anonymous Californian (is Mary Beth a first and last name or just a first and thus anonymous name?) who, although loving Point Roberts, discovered worrisome aspects of life here when she and her husband went house shopping.

Like so many Californians, she came to visit, was enchanted by what she saw, went real estate shopping, and discovered that Point Roberts was not just like California!  Such a disappointment.  Of course, since she already lives in Santa Cruz County (Corallitos), she could just stay there and admire it.  But something about Point Roberts drew her to its heart.  What she hated, though, was the dampness that leads to mold in houses, and the failure to build to code, and, most worrisome, "we noticed that many of these homes had overflowing septic systems and could visibly see the runoff down the streets."  This 'many' was many of the twelve homes that a real estate agent showed them. (Good work, real estate agent!)  I've lived here for about 16 years and I think the last time I saw septic runoff in the streets, I was visiting Bangkok.  But, perhaps Mrs. Beth, whose husband is a building contractor who recognizes mold when he sees it and identifies it on the spot as 'toxic mold,' is more observant or sensitive than I am, given those sixteen years of living in such a slum.

Mrs. Beth finally comes to the conclusion that virtually the whole place needs to be condemned and torn down.  There are times when I think that I have some sense of what kind of world I am living in, what my fellow Americans are thinking and doing, but reading Mrs. Beth's letter just stunned me.  That she had the time to write and warn us and to urge us to destroy the Community Center and our houses!  To worry about us so, and not least when she could be worrying about global warming or about the reduced phytoplankton levels that could end in our having less oxygen to breathe. On the other hand, if we have to breathe less, would that reduce our need to worry about the toxic mold?

It's always a pleasure to welcome the summer tourists, no?

At the Border

Updates below.
 Unusually for me, I've been back and forth across the border quite a bit over the past week since the new Nexus hours went into effect at the Canadian crossing here in Point Roberts.  Down in Bellingham a couple of times, up to the Vancouver airport returning children/grandchildren to the U.S. via Canada, and even a thrift shop, grocery, and laundromat visit to Tsawwassen.

We've been crossing at a variety of times, but the morning lines for the regular lane into Canada still look to be pretty long most days despite the new Nexus hours, although this morning at 9 a.m., it was minimal.  This afternoon, lots of waiting in both the Nexus and the regular lanes (both of them).  Our last two trips have had us choosing the regular lane (with two lanes operating) rather than the Nexus with one, and in both cases, the regular lane got us through faster, although not a lot faster.  I really would just like to cross the border and not have to try to game the system or even think about how to time it.  Twenty years from now will it be any better?

Down at Peace Arch, Nexus has been fine, but the waits to get into the U.S.  in the morning (ca. 9-10 a.m.) in the regular lanes were truly awful.  Somewhat ominously, the signs that describe the wait time at this crossing now say only "Wait time at Peace Arch: No Available Information" and "Wait time at Truck Crossing: N/A".  It's not a confidence building sign.  Probably they'd be better served by just turning off that sign.

Well, it's summer and the waits are long.  And not only is it summer, but it's B.C. Day weekend, so there are a lot of people moving across the Point Roberts border for weekend vacations, U.S. mail, U.S. gasoline, and--at least to judge from the emptiness of the International Market shelves--U.S. food.  If I were a Canadian, I'm not sure that I could legitimately claim that the Canadian border agency has a duty to make it faster for me to get back from Point Roberts for the latter three of those visits.  But if I were a Canadian coming down here, I'd sure think hard about getting a Nexus card.

A reader writes that AM 730 gives border and tunnel wait status reports every few minutes.  A second reader speaks up for AM 1130 and its every ten minute reports 'on the ones,' which I take it means at 01, 11, 21, etc. minutes past the hour.  And, finally, there is this Washington state DOT report on northbound border crossing waits at
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/small/BorderWaitTimes/Blaine.aspx
which is formatted for mobile phones.

Something New

Point Roberts is really just a disorganized (as opposed to organized) retirement community, with a lot of people who have a lot of time on their hands.  Some of that time gets used for projects that benefit some or all of the community (e.g., the lovely concerts that are offered virtually every other week featuring excellent musicians--often from Vancouver--at the Lutheran Church here).  Some of that time gets used on the ordinary bits and pieces of daily living.  But it is the other pieces of that time that fall prey to a tendency toward suggestibility.

I have such a tendency.  Thus, this week we are in the midst of several weeks of spectacular July weather.  It might be that there are a bunch of things that need to be done indoors, but it does not feel like indoors is the place you ought to be in a place where so often the weather is a tad on the dour side; beautiful, but damp, grey, etc.  Right now, though, the world is glowing and it seems, at the very least, best to be out there watching it glow and maybe even glowing with it.

Also, in the summer, people come to visit and bring you round to activities you might not engage in at all or at least not so much as when they have not come to visit you.  This past ten days, we have had a daughter visiting who comes with the skills of an engineer and the enthusiasm for projects of, well, I don't know...of a project enthusiast?  In this case, she has joined in with her father to restore great swaths of order to our somewhat disorderly doings: outbuildings and porches are cleaned and organized; tools and lumber are made orderly and accessible; things that should go to the dump are identified and transported.  So much work goes on every day that not working very hard seems a very slacker way to be living.

And, finally, another daughter sends a book about shade gardens.  In the first few chapters, which I idly read about 6 days ago, the author explained how he came upon the need for creating a shade garden adjacent to his house, a 'green room,' as he called it.  If this book had arrived in my life in May, I would have read it and enjoyed it and put it away.  But this past week, what with the weather and the project mood, the book forced me to follow its lead.  That's what I mean by suggestibility. 

Thus, over the past four days, I have taken to renovating a 20x20 foot space adjacent to the back of our tiny house and turned it, or begun to turn it into a 'green room.'  This area has never been cultivated in any organized way; it was covered with bushes and vines and grasses and buttercups and whatever.  The project required, of course, that all that be removed.  For two days, I simply dug up everything.  Then I began to find things to give it more shape (e.g., an elderly 8x4.5 foot metal roof that was lying around was pressed into service as a wall to create a corner with the existing wooden fence).  Half a dozen marble slabs that came from some other project that belonged to somebody who lived here before we did were lying around and were moved in to provide some paving.  Various stacks of rotting wood were moved out and other pieces of more useful wood were moved in.  Now there is a little deck where a chair can sit in case I want to sit in my shady green room.  And there is a rock.

And, said the book's author, don't buy plants; just transplant them from somewhere else in your garden.  Thus have I moved a hydrangea and a bunch of foxglove and lunaria plants, as well many little ground cover plants cuttings with roots or rootlets (creeping jenny and ajuga and lilies of the valley) into a concentrated area.  And some potted parsley and feverfew.  And a driftwood 'gate' that was providing no good in the back of the garden is now supported by a big alder and is being used to shelter my driftwood collection.

This has been a strange and frenetic piece of work.  Today, I began work on a long-time projected sculpture which involved initially saving about a thousand tin cans, which will eventually be stacked on five thin steel rods.  I had all the cans, mostly rusted, and now I have to drill holes in them all.  But that is underway.  It will take, of course, a number of years for this actually to become a shade garden or even a green room, but it has certainly been an astonishing beginning, and all because of a chance coming together of several factors and my propensity to drift into things with a sudden enthusiasm. 

Puzzled, Puzzling

We have grandchildren visiting this week.  It is possible that everyone has grandchildren visiting this week.  And it seemed a good idea to tidy up the fire pit in our back yard, given the splendid weather and the grandchildren, and cook a few marshmallows for an afterdinner treat.  We've never actually used the pit before, which is why it needed to be tidied up--there were weeds growing down in the concrete ring.  The thing is, we don't eat hot dogs or marshmallows as a rule.

Then, the question of a burn permit came up, given that we are not supposed to be burning yard trimmings right now and the information, vaguely obtained, was that we needed a recreational burn permit in order to toast those marshmallows.  Neilson's Hardware--the source of burn permits--told us, however, that they could not sell us a recreational burn permit and for such use we would need to go directly to the fire department which is, of course, not open today and thus unable to sanction such frivolity.  So, what to do?

I poked around on the net, thinking that there surely must be some kind of exception for marshmallow cooking, but discovered, sadly, that not only do I need a recreational burn permit to toast a marshallow on a stick, but I need one that is good for an entire year and I need to pay $20 for it.  This makes no sense.

However, the next time regular burn permits are available ($5, available any day from Neilson's), I plan to end the yard refuse burn with a lot of marshmallow toasting.  We'll either just eat them all up then, or freeze them for subsequent use.  Or maybe we'll just toast the marshmallows over the grill. 

Really, somebody needs to rethink this.  I'm beginning to think that I will have to go to the Fire Department open house tomorrow, if only to whine a bit.

Good Work, Canada! I Think, I Hope

Update:  This change goes into effect on July 23.  

Canada, apparently recognizing that the border waiting times at the Point Roberts crossing are getting quite problematic, has reached out to address the problem by extending the Nexus hours from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.  That's a big gain for those of us with Nexus cards, which we residents mostly have.  The problems over the past few months on the Canadian side of the crossing have been that the non-Nexus lines are really long.  I'm hoping that they realized that those lines were lengthened because there were so many Nexus holders in them and that, by extending the Nexus hours, the cars in the regular lane would also benefit.  Otherwise, the long lines on the Canadian side will continue, but the Nexus cardholders will get to sail [sale] on through.

Now, it is the Americans' turn to extend those Nexus hours at the Point Roberts border crossing.  Go, team!

Make a Joyful Noise!

What I might hope is the last post on the noise problem.

While pursuing the inner calmness and detachment described by the Stoics and by Seneca in particular, I found it necessary to make some noise of my own.  The tall grasses were beginning to be a problem and the string trimmer seemed the perfect tool now that the grasses were pretty dry.  Last month I couldn't find it when I tried to use it.  I've had it for a year or more, but have only used it once, during which experience I discovered that you have to hold it up.  Somehow, I had thought it would be more like using a vacuum cleaner.  This month, when I went to look for it again, there it was, in the shed, hanging right on the wall.  Previously, I hadn't found it because I thought it was in the shed in its box.  Frequently, I find, performing the same act and expecting a different result does not result in schizophrenia but in a different result.

So, the string trimmer in hand and the headphones on my ears, I went out and trimmed for a half hour or so.  What impressed me was how the headphones made it sound, to me, as if I were making almost no noise at all: a gentle buzzing sound, at worst.  Who could object to this sound, even if it were being made at 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning?  My second realization is that headphones are the answer to the dog noise.  I can wear them when I'm in the quilting workshop (where I most directly face the dog noise).  I never have worn them there because I'm usually there alone and just listen to music directly.  But I can wear earphones and it will mightily reduce the dog bark sound.  And I will just assume that the dogs' owner similarly goes about his life with earphones on and thinks, as a result, that his dogs sound like bees.

The Quiet Country Life

I spent most of the day yesterday in my quilt workshop working on this quilt piece which is now finished.  The activity conjures up such a pretty picture, I think: the quilter working calmly and purposefully with her needle and thread, hour after hour on a quiet, country, summer afternoon, to produce a homely item that she or he or child or friend can toss over him/herself on a cool fall afternoon while lying on the couch lookiing out the window at the fall leaves or reading a much-beloved 19th Century novel.  (I'm not sure there are any 'much beloved' 20th Century novels, other than among the genre of children's books.)  The quilt surely will be filled with that calmness and steadiness.

So pretty to think of it so.  But in fact, by choosing to spend so much time in my workshop yesterday, I was giving myself the opportunity not only to get this quilt finished, but also the opportunity to listen to my neighbors' workpeople attach a new roof to their house.  Well, it's noisy, but it's a limited time issue, and it has to be done, and better to do it (I guess) in the sun than in the rain, although the temperature in this sun on a roof must be highly debilitating or at least dehydrating.  So that's all right.  But accompanying the hammers were the steady barks of the neighbor dogs.  Were I to walk out on my porch, absolute barking hysteria erupted.  Were anyone to come by, or to walk by, or to bike by, all the same.  And after a spell of barking, the dogs are joined by their owner, who yells into the summer afternoon at them to stop, which they do not.

Eventually, they go inside and quiet returns, but by then, I have left the workshop and am somewhere where I can't hear them quite as well anyway.  But there you have it, a quilt made not with quiet and calmness, but one that includes, at least in the final hours, constant noise from without and irateness from within.  Somehow, I think that calling the law to report excessive barking of dogs is not going to turn out well if the law is the owner of the dogs.  I'm thinking of investing in a voice activated recorder.  Then I will make a 24-hour recording of one of those days when the dogs go at it unrelentingly.  Then I will submit it to a notary to document its authenticity.  And then I will send the tapes anonymously with the notary's sealed paper to the higher law.  Or maybe it's time to deal with a journalist who has a shield for the anonymous source.  Nudge, nudge; wink, wink.

Or maybe not.  This afternoon, I am reading Alain De Botton's The Consolations of Philosophy, and, as it happens, after lunch I started on his chapter on the Stoics.  This is Seneca's advice, via De Botton, about being in the vicinity of excessive noise: "To calm us down in noisy streets, we should trust that those making a noise know nothing of us. . . .  We should not import into scenarios where they don't belong pessimistic interpretations of others' motives.  Thereafter, noise will never be pleasant, but it will not have to make us furious." (Ital. added)  Well, I didn't think that the dogs' owner was tolerating the noise in order to drive me crazy, but rather was tolerating the noise because he didn't care whether I was driven crazy or because he didn't notice that it was a crazy-making noise.  However, I recognized Seneca's advice as well advised: "All outdoors may be bedlam, provided that there is no disturbance within."  So, I hope the guy will work with his dogs to quiet them down, and in the meanwhile, I'll work with my within to reduce disturbance.

On Weeds and Life

Tonight, we watched a DVD about Pete Seeger's life.  It was touching, inspiring, filled with good thoughts, good ideas, good ideals, and also good music.  He is a lesson for us all, although I doubt if many of us would be able to take the equivalent of being blacklisted for 17 years as well as he did.  I met him once, years ago in Los Angeles, when I was doing publicity for a folk music club that was sponsoring one of his concerts.  I had dinner with him the night before the concert, along with a dozen other people.  He was charismatic even over dinner. 

And now he must be close to 90 years old, and seems as strong and lively and filled with hope as ever.  Good for him.  For myself, not so strong and lively and filled with hope, I think, but this may largely be a result of the remarkable heat we have had for the past three days.  I can't complain too much, because it didn't even get to be 90 degrees (although it was 88 in the house), and the 'heat wave' lasted only for three days (tomorrow it's supposed to be back to 67 degrees).  But, I did notice that every day of extra warmth produced about a ton more bindweed blooming in the more difficult places to reach in my yard.

A friend says that we are lucky to be living in a place where even the worst weeds are beautiful.  This seems to me to be the wrong message: if they're so beautiful, why am I trying to get rid of them?  And the answer is because there will be nothing out there BUT bindweed if I don't keep at the task.

This summer, grandchildren have been around quite a bit.  Both the grandchildren and their parents have been more than happy to help us with the many bits of work that need always to be done, but no one is very anxious to help with weeding, I find.  In fact, I saw in my 13-y/o granddaughter's eyes, as she watched me weeding, weeding, the conviction that I was nuts.  After all, the thing is, I pull them up, and then they grow back next year.  Don't I see that this is going nowhere? 

Well, to everything there is a season and also a time for every purpose under heaven.  And in this season, my purpose is to pull up those bindweeds, even though their roots may stretch lo unto many feet in length and even though they will return next year.  Did Seeger give up just because wars keep occurring?.  I think Pete Seeger would, if not admire my dedication, at least recognize a similarity between us with respect to sticking to one's view of what is the right thing to do, even though others might think it foolish or even wrong.  His life has been spent encouraging peace and harmony and group singing and generosity and compassion.  At the moment, mine feels like it has been spent at war with crab grass and its fellow noxious weeds, bindweed being only one of the latest in a long line.  Maybe tomorrow, out in the fields of bindweed, I'll try singing 'We Shall Overcome."

Knowing Good and Bad

As it happens, I have made two trips to Bellingham and back in the past two days.  And both times, there have been things of an edible nature in my car.  What I have not taken into Canada is a potato, an apple, a pear, a peach, a nectarine, a cherry, or a blueberry.  An what I have not taken into the U.S. is a lemon, an orange, a lime, a grapefruit, a green onion, a chive or any gathering of chives, a dragon fruit, a starfruit, a mangosteen, a kiwi fruit, a tomato, or a green pepper.

On Wednesday, when I went from Canada to the U.S., I brought with me 5 tomatoes that were grown in Washington and as I came through the border, I confided to the the U.S. CBP person that I had five tomatoes from Canada, and he said that was good and I might go on my way.  However, on Thursday, word came down from on high that tomatoes from Canada were no longer good and they may not come here any more.

But, I still have those five tomatoes (or, actually three of them now) sitting on my counter and I say to them, "Are you good? Or, are you bad?"    It is hard to know.  The comforting thing, of course, is that bananas can go either way without anybody caring.  And that is good.

Postal Gardening Concerns

For those who have been concerned about the deteriorating condition of the three planters in front of the local post office, here is an explanation.  The post office lost its gardener and the planters and their plants fell into the slough of despond with the news.  However, there are new plants on the way and I guess a new gardener, although I did not inquire about the latter.  But it is good to know that the post office still cares.