I Live in a Redwood Forest

I guess that's a quote from "Obviousman."  

But a couple of days ago, after I'd finished my household chores in the morning, I brewed a cup of green tea and took it out to the back deck; and as I sat there half in shade and half in late-summer sunlight, I gazed up.  And the utter blueness of the sky surrounded in my view by the green-black of evergreen spires made my heart leap.  "I live in a redwood forest!" I exulted.  "I live here!"

The wonder of this fact still can stop me in my tracks -- if I gaze out one of the cottage windows at the symphony of green; as I walk down the narrow track to get the morning mail and newspaper; or when a mountain breeze springs up suddenly and the winey, piney air wafts through the room.

This week, the weather pixies at NOAA are predicting a rather drastic heat spell for our part of the world; we will have a bit of it for the next two days, I guess.  But on Thursday morning we are heading south for a week of visiting in Santa Barbara and Pasadena.  Oddly, the temperaures down there are predicted to be cooler than in northern CA.

I will take my laptop south with me and chronicle this first return visit to our former home-site since the big relocation.  We'll stay with Melissa while we're in Santa Barbara -- and overnight on Friday with Marie in Pasadena, where Stella and family are visiting and a Soule sibling reunion dinner is planned. Labor Day holiday weekend will be spent back in Santa Barbara, seeing old friends and relaxing with my sibs.  A bit of business must done on the big "back to school" Tuesday following the last holiday of summer; and then we've planned to drive slowly back north, stopping in Carmel Valley for a lovely finale to our one week of vacation this year.

And yes: we will be glad at last to return to our mountain greenery on September 5 -- to take up the settling-in process again.  The Studio/Shed should be finished and ready for John to move in (our intrepid Mark plans to work through to completion while we are gone).  When all of John's office stuff is out of the main house, I will begin to make my Retreat Suite.

Stay tuned for reports from the Road Trip, starting Thursday  (But first:  tune into next-President Obama's speech on Thursday evening!)

Whoo-eee!

Well, I'm just happy that my I-Net connection is working so well this morning!  So I'll take time by the forelock, as they used to say in Louisa Alcott's day, and catch my Faithful Readers up on our past week.

The "Studio" is progressing very rapidly toward completion; if I knew how to upload pictures to this blog you could see for yourself.  Suffice it to say that by the start of Labor Day Weekend (which is creeping up on us, buddies) the full flooring and wallboards should be installed, and painting begun.  John goes out there every day and remeasures and draws diagrams (who knew?) -- and yesterday he took a chair out (after the workers had departed) and tried various locations to the purpose of deciding where his easy chair might best be placed for the best views out the two windows.  It must be like childhood revisited: building a treehouse!

So everyone's going off somewhere for the holiday weekend aforementioned.  The builders are taking a family trip; Julie and her gang are going over to the East Bay for Danny D's little league baseball season finale.  And we are going south.  We will drive down to Santa Barbara on Thursday next, to stay with Poo.  On Friday we head on further south to Pasadena, where a Soule R/U is planned for that evening (Stella, Eric and Louise are visiting Marie; James gets back to the USA from Singapore or wherever he's been this summer, stopping in LA before returning to grad school: and a Stella-visit always engenders a family gathering.  Leeessaaah and her entourage will come to Pasadena too.  Bob is making red beans and rice) ..... We'll return to S.B. for the holiday weekend, with a chance to visit with old friends and attend Trinity's Sunday services.  On the Tuesday everyone goes back to work or school, we will fit in some dental appointments and other business in S.B.; and then we're heading back north, stopping in Carmel Valley for a bit of quiet R & R before returning to our mountains on Friday, September 5.  We are hoping the shed will be completely ready by then, as the contractors will finish it up on their return from the long weekend holiday.

This has been a quiet, domestic sort of week (I baked a fabulous stuffed manicotti casserole for dinner plus three batches of cookies, yesterday (the latter a volunteer project for the church bake sale this weekend -- with leftovers for our own cookie jar, of course).  I had a girls' outing with Julie and Stef on Wednesday -- we went to a matinee of "The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants II" and had lunch at Malone's Grill (yummy).  

Today is John's and my "Grand Day Out" -- we try to do this once a week -- this time we're off to explore the Loch Lomond Rec Area with its reservoir and the Trout Farm Inn on the river -- a part of this valley we've not seen yet.

Well, that blast ought to hold youse, for a while .... and if my I-Net holds up I'll be back latah, dahlings.

Mountain BBQ

Yay!  Joe and Kathie and Josh came up on Saturday afternoon, and we "christened" (with fire) the gas grill that they gave us for a housewarming gift.  I had bought big sirloin steaks, and made a pot of Santa Maria Beans; we had a couple of fine little salad sides to accompany the meal and plenty of local bakery Francese bread (which makes wonderful leftovers sandwiches, too, as we found out this noon!)  They brought a lovely bottle of Merlot from Santa Ynez Valley, to accompany the meal, and we finished it off with fresh peach ice cream.  (There you go, foodies.)  It was a lovely, balmy full-moon evening, and we had a great time helping Josh fly his old-fashioned balsa-wood airplane that Grandpa John got for him.  I could not conquer the "add image" process on this blogger -- it was taking over an hour to upload -- so instead I infested your inboxes with jpegs -- but at least you got photos somehow.  (Jimma, I hope you enjoyed the Weisse-Blau picnic tablecloth!)

Sunday morning we went to church, did a bit of shopping, and then stopped at Scopazzi's for a late lunch on their verandah, to celebrate the fact that John's gout is much improved.

Everywhere we go in this valley, we run into people we know: at K-Mart after church, our closest neighbors, Teresa and Ted, chatted with us for a while; at Scopazzi's, the Bracken Brae treasurer, dear Lynn Newsome, was lunching with friends and waved us over to meet them.... I love village life!

Mark The Builder.....

..... arrived at 10 AM sharp yesterday, with Tall Del, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, in tow; and the interior of the Studio/Doghouse is pretty much demolished.  This is so exciting!  I took pictures before they started, and more after they left, to show the progress; I'll send a few by e-mail (now known as the "old-fashioned method" -- ye gods) and will continue to try to master uploading to this Blogger post, later.

 

As you can see if you've followed this chronicle to the letter, our life in the mountain forest is still very happy.  We figure it will take us a full year before the cottage is past its re-birthing phase -- and here's how I've divided it up, in my planning.

I see the first four months, summer into autumn, as the initial "Moving In" -- and getting John's studio operative is a big part of that effort (we love Mark The Builder -- he's the happiest person I think I've ever met).  

The winter segment of this first year will be for Hibernation, and while we're more confined to the indoors, we will be spending a lot of time in the Library/Parlor, the interior heart of the place.  It is comfortable enough for now -- but as we sit by the little wood-stove fire and dream, we'll be designing the interior and planning for what needs to be done to complete it -- as well as the garden -- come Spring.

During these first two phases, I'll also be designing and executing my Retreat -- the small suite off of the parlor, my Room Of One's Own -- which will also be a private retreat area for any pilgrim who may wander by in need of rest and quiet beauty.  When a guest is in residence, I plan that this cottage shall be a true Pilgrim's Inn, and I will happily serve as the Mistress of the House, to make the retreat visit as lovely for our guest as possible.

And in the Spring, we will hope to complete the whole process, bringing our winter daydreams for the interior rooms, the Master Suite, and the gardens, into full bloom.

All of this Dream Come True is such a joy to us; and those of you who are responsible for that will be in our grateful hearts and in our prayers forever.

Bowser de Medici Commissions A Palace

Since Teri suggests that Lorenzo the Magnificent, who also suffered from gout, was big on commissioning grand schemes whilst resting his toe on a velvet pillow -- John is following suit by OK'ing the renovation of the backyard shed.  Our friendly, ever cheerful Mark The Builder will be starting work on Monday morning.  He will strip the building of its lowered ceiling loft and the unnecessary built-ins; replace the rotting floor and wallboards (installing insulation where/if needed); add an insulated door; and paint as required.  Probably there are a few other little things he has promised to do to it.  But he gave us a fixed-price estimate, and promises to have the work completed by Labor Day weekend.  John is adamant that it will not be designated as The Doghouse, however much I would love it.  Right now he is liking "The Studio," which is better, to my mind, than "The Outhouse" -- his original concept.  Whatever.  It's his palace and he can call it Pitti, or Grande, or whatever he likes, and decorate it with all the electronics and wires and weird posters and beat-up old metal file cabinets he may choose.

Meanwhile, Mrs. deMedici plans to get all his "shit" (thank you, Marie!) out of the guest room ASAP (i.e. in early September) and then will have total control over the planning and execution of that Retreat -- it shall be a sort of monastery guest-room for pilgrims when they wander by, but is to be for me, at long last, "a room of one's own."

Meanwhile, for you Anglophiles, Roman Catholics, and movie buffs out there in blogland, we can recommend the new version of "Brideshead Revisited."  I loaded Gouty One into the Honda sedan chair and transported him down the hill to see this gorgeous film at the Santa Cruz Palazzo de Art-Films on Thursday afternoon.  It was a fair treat for the eyes, quite decent acting -- and the screenplay was by Leenie's script guy, Andrew Davies.  Check it out.

La la, how the life goes on!

"I want my Orange Curacao!"

That personally famous line from the Masterpiece Theater version of "The Pallisers" echoes in my mind as I write here that John seems to be undergoing a small attack of The Gout.  (The dying scion of the Palliser clan was a gouty old goat who was demanding something gouty old goats can't have -- since he was dying, it seemed very cruel to deny him, IMHO.)  Anyway, rest assured that John is NOT dying; but his big toe on the left foot is very swollen and sore.  He's done his I-net research and is keeping his foot elevated as much as possible -- looks a little silly hopping around with one leg in the air, but c'est la vie.)  We are now relegated to eating vegetables and a lot of stuff with no interesting seasonings -- and worst of all, no glorious late-summer fresh fruits, which we were gorging ourselves on when we first got up here: golden raspberries, ripe melon, magnificently sweet peaches, etc etc.  I went down to the farmers' market yesterday and bought a ton of veggies, but had to be content with sampling all the fruit on my own.  (Their Kettle Korn ain't too bad, neither!)

Bright Days/Dark Nights: French Film

On Thursday I drove down to Santa Cruz to meet Julie for a Girls' Afternoon; we browsed on Crazy Street (Pacific Avenue is a nuthouse scene with great shops); had a retro hamburger-and-shake at Jack's shack; and saw the terrific French thriller, "Tell No One" at a very retro little theatre, the Nickelodeon -- they serve decadent cake squares and cappuccino in the lobby stand. (I'll tell everyone: the film is very dark, but a winner; I just had to remind myself now and then that outside in lovely S.C. the sun was shining brightly and everyone was very laid-back!)  No kidding, though, kids: don't miss this prize-winning film!

The drive back up through the redwoods on Highway 9 put me in a fine sunny mood again; but when I got home and was fixin' to fix dinner, the electricity went down again -- second time in one week.  However, we put our Italian Boot Camp experience to good use: out came the candles and battery-powered lantern; a butane one-burner stove was set up on the front porch; and we cooked up some great ravioli I had in the freezer (gorgonzola/artichoke/walnut filling), in a pot of free-range chicken broth I'd just snarked at New Leaf Market on my way home; and we feasted by candlelight.  Set the dishes in the sink, took a couple of candles to the bathroom to wash up, and we were off to bed in the (really) dark forest.

All was light, in the morning: we'd envisioned toddling on down to Rainbow's End for hot coffee, but we were again all-electric.  This is the problem up here; even the bathwater is heated by P G & E -- oy.  So Joe and KathieB, if you're reading this, better keep the spare bedroom made up, because we may be visiting grandparents more often than you'd appreciate, come the bad weather up here!

So yesterday, in our ongoing quest to prize out every great lunch emporium in the area, we drove over to Scotts Valley at noon, to Malone's Grande Grille -- and it is truly fine.  We sat on a pretty shaded deck and I had cream-of-green-chile chowder with a prime-rib French Dip sandwich; John had Spinach Salad with grilled skirt steak strips; and we were happy in the sunshine.  We went to the Big K-Mart over there in commercial-land, and got a sale bargain on a gas BBQ grill; we need to be able to cook more than pasta/soup when power is out (and thanks to Joe and KB, we now will be able to do that! Bless you, kids!)

So, the weekend is here, and so are we -- been through the light and the dark side of mountain living, and surviving very well indeed!

Aunt Poo Comes To Visit

Hooray, we have our first houseguest!  Aunt Poo (my little sis, Melissa) drove up yesterday and is spending today and tonight here before returning to Santa Barbara on Wednesday.  It's very lovely to have her here; our little guest room is also John's office at present, but we cleared away the packing boxes that were resting on the old leather sofa, put out the big puff-quilt and a pillow or two, and she's squeezed in there between John's desk and a bookshelf.  But it seems quite adequate for her.  I'm happy to report that Poo has gotten right with the "program" up here -- sleeping deeply and well, eating Frannie-foods, reading in the sun on the back deck, and taking walks around the forest trails.  This is just the sort of peace that I envisioned and hoped for a guest to find, in our "mountain retreat" site -- and she really seems to enjoy the quiet, slow pace, the fresh air, and the major pastime available up here: gazing out at the redwoods and the distant hills.

We're going to leave her to relax this afternoon while we run down to the local farmers' market for fresh fruits and veggies (and some fresh-popped Kettle Korn) ..... we'll bring back for her a little cake to have with tea on the deck.

I hope life is as good for all of you who read this, as it is for happy me.