The Big BEFORE

We are about to start redoing our front yard, due in part to the California drought.  Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I present to you my Front and Side Yard novel.

 Disclaimer: I haven't let my husband fertilize, weed or feed the lawn since we decided to do this.

The jacaranda tree stays. 

This row of junipers needs to be demolitioned, as do most of the plants everywhere else.  (And the railroad ties)

These grow boxes need to be demolitioned.

The hose bib needs to be moved to the left, towards the front of the house.

This bush/tree stays.

We anticipate that the new fence will be about where the sprinkler riser is, just under the "6."

The area to the edge of the patio, beyond the fence (and not on the diagram) also needs turf removal, with mulch replacing it.

We removed an olive tree, and need to replace the lawn in this area and replace existing sprinkler heads with water efficient heads.  That would be a separate bid, so we can compare apples to apples on the bids coming in.  It's approximately 17' by 12.'

 

Here's the garden sketch I drew up.

You Don't Always Get What You Pay For

The landscape architect sat on the other side of the table, her bracelets jangling, her confidence in her design evident.  We'd contacted her, contracted with her and after four long months, the moment where she'd present her designs was here.

 

(random design from web, not ours)

Why four months?  The original due date was the end of April, or so her email said.  Then she wasn't quite ready as she was working on someone else's plans but would be able to get to ours when she got back from Paris.  Okay.  Then there was another delay because she had just gotten back from France and was still working on them.  Okay.  She wanted to present the plans to us two days before our big trip and I postponed it until after we returned.  Then she wrote and said she'd like to postpone our meeting date again because she had a chance to go away for the long 4th of July weekend (and who could pass up that chance?).  I said, Um, no.  Not interested in postponing again. 

 

This is a YES.

I'd met with her initially in March, gathering together my ideas of our xeriscaped yard into two files: YES and NO, and sent her the links.  I went down to the city and got our plot plans.  She wrote and wrote as I talked during that first meeting, asking questions, clarifying.  I was really happy to get this process started.

This is another YES picture, as I said I wanted an interesting way to present my vegetable garden, not just boring grow boxes.

And we wanted a water feature where we could relax and enjoy the sound, like this one in my sister Susan's yard.

So back to the Presentation Meeting.  We were already a little testy with each other because I'd said I didn't want another postponement, and I may have emphasized the word "another" because she got a bit huffy over the phone and said that I was the one who had postponed it.  Right.  Okay, moving on.

We started to ask questions about the plan in front of us, drawn to a scale of 1/8" to 1 foot, which made it look puny on the page, barely filling up 1/4 of the lefthand side.  The plant list was extensive and I was chagrined as she talked, mentioning the multiple rose bushes.  I'm NOT a rose grower.  My mother is, and her garden was gorgeous and full of beauties.  My roses are nearly all gifts to us that I planted and can barely keep alive.  (You all know I'd rather be quilting.)  Dave had asked for a very-low maintenance yard, but she kept saying "deadheading" and "trimming" and other such things.

Finally I stopped asking questions and just let her talk.  She'd brought us two 18 x 24" sheets of paper, both handdrawn with circles for plants.  One was colored in with colored pencils.  The fee: a sack of money.  To our minds, the sack of money was way too much for what we saw before us.  There were no sprinkler diagrams, no material callouts, no information on possible lighting, or power for the water feature, let alone any info at all about that water feature except that there was a circle drawn and the letters "WF" on the circle. 

We, my husband and I, were done.  Our silence, punctuated with polite smiles, lasted until we accepted her bill with an accompanying addressed envelope, shook hands and she jangled her way out.  After one terse email exchange, where she said "I'm a Garden DESIGNER, not a landscaper architect" and "I'll be happy to make any modifications you want, but my going rate is $$ an hour," we learned that she was not flexible, especially when she haughtily reminded us (via email) that she had designed over 250 gardens, of which 50 were now in existence.  We knew once again that we were done.

I think the most discouraging thing was that we had counted on her to help us, to get us ready and get us set for sending our plans out for bid.  I moped around for a while and had a root canal in the meantime.  I think the two experiences were comparable.

But nothing was going to happen unless I made it happen.  So I gathered up all the garden books I had in the house, then ordered the one on how to draw landscaping, and went to town.  I used the plant list from the city's WaterWise website, jotting down information such as how much sun a plant needed, how much water it liked, and the height and spread of each plant.  After a long week, with a night of selecting plants with Dave, I had this:

Scale: 1/4" to 1 foot, filling up the plan paper nicely.  In the lower right I had a landscape title, but I've whited it out for internet publication.  And yes, I know.  I have boring grow boxes for my vegetables.

I'm no landscape architect, and I'll depend on the expertise of companies I'm contracting to fix any rough spots in my design. After the city calls me back so I can get my "tear-up-the-lawn" rebate, and after the bids from a couple of companies I've contacted come in, we'll be rolling again.

Dueling, Dulling Technology

This past weekend was the battle of the iPads.  And technology.  And the battle of wills--the humans vs. the tablets.

Setting up an iPad goes in cycles: you love it, you hate it, you love it, you hate Amazon, you love Apple's Genius Bar, you hate your WiFi.  And on and on.  Here are the highlights:

• an iTunes account with a deleted email is a nightmare.  But after a trip to the Genius Bar, and then 90 minutes on the phone the next morning with Apple, the problem was [finally] solved.
• two iTunes accounts in one family are fine, but now Apple puts a 90-day moratorium on switching between the two.  In practical language that means that I could log into Account A, download those purchased books, then log out, then log into Account B, download those purchased books.  But then you can't "read" on account A's books (see above, 90-days, etc.) unless you are willing to call Apple back and pull the card that says "my mom is 86 and my dad is 88 and you're telling me that I have to tell him that he can't read his books?"  Strings were pulled.  Problem was solved.
• there are certain apps that Apple insists you have to have on the iPad, period.  But they can be moved to a "back page."
• Amazon will download into the most recent iPad device.  Even if it is not the right iPad device.  Which means that you have to log into Amazon, delete the devices you don't need, then re-send the purchased book.  Which means that the human better know what the machine is up to.
• Dragon Dictation app is brilliant.  While I could suggest a few improvements, on the whole, I love the app.
• It's easier to read email through the Mail on the iPad rather than on Gmail, especially if there are attached photos. They are hard to enlarge in Gmail.  A cinch -- and an outward pinch -- on the iPad.

Generally speaking, and with only a few minor remaining tweaks, I think the humans won this round.

Strong's Canyon

 I head out early in the morning to the 29th Street Trailhead, my goal the bridge over the brook through Strong's Canyon.  New signage directs me to a slightly different path and I snap photos of the blooming flowers as I walk to the brook and back.

 When I go anywhere, and have my camera in hand, I tend to focus in on the details, see the smaller parts of the bigger landscape.  I'll take a photo of the doorknocker, while my husband (with his camera) will take a picture of the street.  I'll find the flowers in a canyon, and he'll take a photo of the vista.  

 So it was no surprise that when I got home and was reviewing my photos to find only one landscape photo showing a dark winding path with a mountain sunrise far away.  But there were multiples of flowers, grasses, a bent branch, the brook -- both upstream and down -- and quite a few shot of paths descending and ascending into thickets.  So I always comment that to get the full picture of anywhere my husband and I are taking photos, you need both of us: one for the big picture and one for the small details, a perfect duo.

I've been here at my parents' home for a couple of days now, and they have a marriage that is nearly sixty-six years strong and still going.  Like our paired photography, one of them might see the big picture and the other, the details.  At other times, the detail person catches the view, and the other notices the flowers on the path.  It's a truth that most good marriages require this dance, this partnership, and it's always enjoyable to see them, at 86 and 88, still negotiating their way through.  I do love coming round a corner and finding them sitting together, her hand in his.  Or when doing an errand, he points out the drop of the curb, and landscaper's hose across her path, guiding her so she won't fall.

They allow me this intimate look into their lives knowing that I will take it into my own life: even with my camera in my pocket, in image after image and detail after detail, the bigger picture reveals their friendship, a canyon's worth of brooks and flowers and small gestures and larger shared concerns, grown deep over a lifetime. 

Celebrate With Honor

 

Tonight I smell fires, something usual in my neck of the woods, but unusual for here, two states away from home.  But Dad says "It's just barbeques."  For several years on Memorial Day morning, we've gone out and stood on the median in the large, broad street near to our house and waved flags and flashed peace signs at all the patriotic motorcyclists in West Coast Rolling Thunder, a parade of choppers that goes on for nearly an hour.

 But this year I'll be down at the Apple store with my parents, trying to get all the iClouds and iTunes and iPads and their accounts all massaged into place.  It used to be I'd just turn off the computer and turn it back and that would pretty much fix anything that was wrong with a Mac.  But now it's getting waaaaay too complicated, with all our iSystems, Syncing, passwords (we are carrying in a sheaf of passwords) and user names, and we need a genius or two to help us out.  

It's Memorial Day, a day of decorating graves (two done earlier this morning, the rest done last Thursday).  A day of remembering not only our own ancestors, but those who died fighting in wars, hence the West Coast Rolling Thunder, a parade of aging Vietnam War Veterans who are finally getting their due and their own honor.  

I love this holiday, for the traditions of my parents placing flowers on graves, for all the memorials around the country, and for the barbeques that make my room at night smell like the countryside is on fire. Happy Memorial Day, 2014.

Name Change Chame Nange

In the past year the President of our College has presided over the opening of the library (slightly before her term, but only just), the demolition of the old library, the opening of the Aquatic Center, the demolition of a few more buildings, and new lights in some of the parking lots.  An auspicious beginning, for sure.

We recently received a Letter From the President where she outlined that according to committee we will now change the name of just about every building on campus.  My favorite change was the Aquatic Center's morphing over to the Kinesiology, Health Education and Aquatics Complex.  Everything is a complex now: West Complex, Central Complex, and East Complex.  But the Science Building to Canyon Hall?  The Cafeteria to Crafton Hall?  It's bad enough that the name of my college sounds like a boys' prep school, but we certainly are going to a high register level of language on the naming.

I wonder if I mailed out a Letter From the Adjunct, thanking everyone for their support, and announcing sweeping new changes in an area or two, if anyone would read it?  No.  The name of the Adjunct Game is Keep Your Head Down.  And now that I've used up my supply of upper-case letters, and the prose is flattening out, it's time to move from my Johns Hopkins Sewing Studio into my John Q. Harvard Living Room.

Doctor's Visit

 Annual Tune-Ups today at the doctors' offices.  As I get older, I'm always weighing the need to be truthful about all my body's quirks with the need to put up with the hassle of seeing specialists, confessing bad habits (eating too many Mother's Day chocolates), and venting about the aches and pains that are a daily fact of life.  I already see a dermatologist and an oncologist (told today it would be for a total of TEN years, not the five I was thinking it would be), and am hoping not to enlarge that circle.  So I was happy that the Primary Care Physician gave me a clean bill of health.

Then, as she was leaving, she said, "But I'm glad I'm not in charge of your skin."

Buckle

So when school is over for the semester, is it buckle down to work?  Quiltwork? Housework? Clean-out-the-garage-work?

Buckle up a car seat belt? as in it a time for travel to see grandchildren, trips to Daiso Japan, the store that sells "mochilato," or a local fabric shop?

Or is it just a time to buckle, as in a buckle fracture, the bone collapsing under stress like an accordian? 

Can I do all three?  I gave my "final" yesterday, showing up ostensibly for 20 minutes, but ending up talking to a young (nearly 30 years old) man for nearly an hour, before I collected my things and bid him farewell.  ("Keep in touch!" the final parting phrase.)  I also was given a bag of Ghirardelli Chocolates from another young (nearly 35) man, who I'd had in a previous class.  It was good to see him, and this time he earned an A from me.

I've kind of flopped around in the interim between my last class a few days ago and this "final" and wondered if I'd ever get the energy to begin on some quiltwork, let alone the other kinds of work.  I feel like my brain is flabby too, having expended a ton of brain cells on a post on the quilty blog about copyright, and my recent quilt that is subtitled "High Drama, Prima Donna, Cloak and Dagger Quilt."  I feel more like the cat up there, from the Mutts cartoonist.

The trick is to be content, to look like that cat. . . rather than messing with a bunch of buckles.

Category One

We received an email in our school emailbox announcing a "Post-Graduation Celbration" with the following flyer:

(Our college is nowhere near a beach and who is Matthew Roberts, anyway?)

There's been a lot of interesting developments around campus lately, beginning with the jubilant (!) announcement (!) of our 5-buck raise.  Per hour.  But it is retroactive for a year.  If they tripled that we would still be in the lower 25% range of adjunct raise.  I may be making that number up, but it feels about right.  I know we're not in the top 50% nor at the bottom of the heap, either. This news is about a Category One level on a scale of 1-5 (one being the lowest), but I'm happy to have any kind of  pay raise, especially since we've had our wages frozen for several years.

We're also getting the parking lot by the lower level of the library that should have been put in when they built the library, creating parking headaches. But next semester's parking woes will be Category Five on a scale of 1-5 as they are closing one of the main parking lots to build our new College Center, which is billed as a "center for the college" but when you look at the space usage, it's really just new offices for the Administration, while the faculty offices are still in pre-1970s buildings, dark and dank and woefully small.  But then, they aren't really hiring new faculty these days -- just administrators, with a few adjuncts -- so I guess new faculty digs aren't needed.

One student appears to have stopped coming to class, now that we have 4 weeks left, another student was caught plagiarizing and I sent her name up the admin ladder, and still another student seems to have no regard for the start time of class for when he does come in it's like he's the only person in the room, standing, talking, flailing through his backpack as he settles himself. 

Their major paper of the semester is due in two weeks and I've put the screws on them to get cranking.  One student is calmer than a summer lake in the morning, while others are Category Ten on the panic scale of 1-5.  You can see it in their eyes, their inability to find anything in their backpack or folder, the stepped up visits to Office Hours which I hold at a table in the library, since the Adjunct Office Conditions are about a Category 12 on a scale of 1-5 (with 1 being most suitable), as compared to the Faculty Offices.

We are all tired.  The students are tired, teachers are tired and the staff barely move from their rolling chairs when you ask them a question, their fingers poised over the keyboard while they barely move their eyes from the screen to your face in order to see if you are a Category One person or a Category Ten person on a scale of 1-5, with 1 being the least important. If it's awarded on power, the only power I hold is a fully-paid up parking pass for a Faculty/Staff slot and an ability to award grades to the deserving and undeserving alike.  If it's on looks, I am always fully dressed.  If it's on brains, mine generally show up at the time I need them to. But with having to sign a paper every semester acknowledging my non-renewable contract and lowly status, it's really not a hard question: I'm a Category One, most definitely. 

Which is why I'm taking an unpaid sabbatical leave next semester.

Easter 2014: Because of Him

Photos are Missing

I don't know why I have this interesting European-style gray bar image on most of my Blogspot images.  A complete mystery.  Apparently someone flipped a switch at Google that did A which led to B which meant that many of my photos, even ones that I own and uploaded myself, are now unavailable on the blog.


I've been toying with the idea of shutting down all my Google-related blogs completely, donning a sackcloth and ashes, and hiding out in the bushes alongside the highway for some time now.  This may have pushed me over the edge.  I will still run my Wordpress blogs, however.

When confronted with some seemingly inexplicable change in our software/hardware that takes us days to figure out, my mother and I like to say that the "27-year-olds have been busy" in these tech companies, and after reading last week's New York Times article, I realize our attempt-at-good-humor tag line may not be too far off the mark.  While the article dealt with those who are employed there, with the different cultures between the young, hip, cool (think: 27 year olds) and their elder (think: 50 years old) engineers, I can also see it playing out in the world at large.  I think Google is trying to manage their massive GoogleWorld and in doing so is making moves that we elderfolks can't decipher or understand.

However, the best revenge is to live long.  Soon enough these 27-year-olds will be inhabiting their own 50-year-old bodies, moaning about what the new 27-year-olds are doing to "their" products.  I'll be long gone (pray for no Google in heaven!), but can only imagine how satisfying that would be to hear their complaints and see their confusion.

Update: Apparently if I used an old link to my old Picasa albums and set them all to PUBLIC, which means Google is further down that road about making us all link to each other (privacy be damned I want your data) then the photos will show up again.  Which they have.  Which still leaves me pondering my options about whether or not I want to blog on Google.  Those highway bushes are looking pretty tempting.

Pikus-Pace Intervew

I don't know how long this video will be available, but click over *here* to see it while it lasts.  (Love her necklace!)

Days Stacked Like Dishes

 

Days

Each one is a gift, no doubt,
mysteriously placed in your waking hand
or set upon your forehead
moments before you open your eyes.

Today begins cold and bright,
the ground heavy with snow
and the thick masonry of ice,
the sun glinting off the turrets of clouds.

Through the calm eye of the window
everything is in its place
but so precariously
this day might be resting somehow

on the one before it,
all the days of the past stacked high
like the impossible tower of dishes
entertainers used to build on stage.

No wonder you find yourself
perched on the top of a tall ladder
hoping to add one more.
Just another Wednesday,

you whisper,
then holding your breath,
place this cup on yesterday’s saucer
without the slightest clink.

—Billy Collins                                                                                                                

Sailing Alone Around the Room

Fading

Four more days until the end of the semester, and I feel like this photo of my Santa Quilt, purposely faded in intensity so I can doodle my quilting designs on it.

I took it in today to class, tucked in my pink briefcase right behind their new Precis Assignment, the Checklist for their Research Paper packets, and the three-page Peer Review handout.  Since I spent Saturday morning in Urgent Care getting diagnosed with Bronchitis Induced Asthma, and then getting a breathing treatment and receiving four medications (all together now: I Believe in Pharmaceuticals), after an hour of waiting at the pharmacy, I was pretty tired, so went home, swallowed a glug of cough syrup and went out like a (drugged) light while Dave put up the outside Christmas lights.  At least someone is productive around our house.

I was most concerned because we'd spent Thanksgiving with a friend with a low-functioning immune system, so I asked the doctor, "Am I contagious?"  "No," he said.  Relief.  And so we swing into the holiday, with lights on the front of the house and me wheezing in between inhaler hits. 

So, that faded Santa is a good representation of how things are around here.  This afternoon I crunched down a cough drop during class to keep the coughing at bay while they read through the handouts, one by one.  Then we got to the Peer Review.  The stats:

• Twenty students still on the rolls.
• Three have stopped coming.
• Five didn't have the requisite three-page minimum on their essay, so couldn't participate.
• Twelve students spent the rest of the hour, trading papers, evaluating.
• I doodled on my faded Santa, a satisfying diversion.

We came out to the most glorious sunset, and two of the girls sighed audibly at the brilliantly colored sky.  I snapped, then posted, photos on Instagram, then drove home on the back roads, avoiding the horrific freeway traffic.

The latest news from the Educational Front is that our Dean has been canned.  Well, he has until June on his contract, so there have been "Reporting Reassignments," which doesn't affect what I do one whit, except that I don't see him slinking around the Tutoring Center, hobnobbing with the staff as much.  The last time I saw him, he was dressed like an upscale bum: half-shaven, casual clothes, his dreads grown out again, and sneakers.  I made some comment that he looked comfortable today, and he said, "I try to dress up as much as my faculty does."  So even though I had to overlook that snotty comment, I did sort of like the guy, but he's a goner, while I still wear pearls and nice clothes and have my weensy little adjunct job that involves coming to class when I feel like staying home in bed, but I did solve a Santa-quilting problem, then was taken out to Pho for dinner by my light-stringing husband.

On the whole, not a bad day.