YMMV

I haven't sewn at all this week, had a weird fever for several days, which took a bit to recover from. Mostly just spending my energy keeping the plants (and the family) alive. So this is a bit of a YMMV *(Your Mileage May Vary) post. This is a picture of a succulent that's on our outdoor table that I eat lunch at when it's not too hot. I truly love the ombré colors of the leaves, sometimes when I'm not careful watering it holds on to one perfect drop of water in its center. The sun dries it out quickly of course. But it's always nice to catch the sun shining in it.  

When I was feeling yucky, my DH bought me a popsicle when he was out and about. It's supposed to be SpongeBobSquarepants, but looked a lot like how I was feeling at the moment. When you have a fever and don't want to eat anything, a popsicle really hits the spot. 

We've been making popsicles lately, and I made some with coconut/pineapple juice, wow was that ever weird. The saltiness fell all the way to the tip of popsicle and concentrated itself (heavier than everything else I guess), so the first lick was Super Weird. But then it was as good. as I'd hoped it would be. 

Hot tip:  The 

To The Power of Seven juice from Trader Joe's makes insanely good popsicles.

I took the traditionally terrible pictures of the lunar eclipse, which we had a lot of cloud cover for, but it opened up just enough to see the moon with a big bite out of it. But with the naked eye, I really could see the moon quite clearly, more than usual. I like the slightly red-orange tint around the edge, it was a visible "Blood Moon" in SoCal apparently.

We had a red flag warning on Friday because of the remnants of two tropical storms combining and coming through, so I spent a lot of time watering outside "just in case", even while it rained a little bit on me (as I was watering). The clouds were weird that day and it was very muggy for an hour or two after the rain.

And I happened to notice when my car turned over 86,000 miles *exactly* which was for some reason, worth a picture, even on Bear Creek Road.

Hopefully back to some sewing content soon!

Three Exhibits At Once

 

It has been quite the month for me as far as exhibits go, I had three quilts simultaneously on display in various places. And I only have gotten to one of them myself.

First, was the quilt, Ocean Effect, that I made for the Bay Area Modern Quilt exhibit at the San Mateo County Fair, "Modern Art Meets Modern Quilt." This is a picture of the exhibit showing off many of the great modern art inspired pieces that we made.

And I even won a first place ribbon! Photo credit for both of these pictures go to one of our members, Erin M.

Secondly, another BAMQ exhibit, this time at the Redwood City Public Library Downtown, right in the children's section. Sixteen quilts representing popular children's books. When I was in there checking out the display, there were several kids and their grown-ups choosing their favorites. It's a great display.

My Wizard of Oz quilt

And then, much much closer to home, the San Lorenzo Valley Quilters put out a call for quilts to be displayed at the Boulder Creek Library. 

Luckily for me, my wonderful DH has gone to the library and shared this selfie with my quilt, Burn Grow Slide that's hanging up. 

It's great to have the opportunity to support libraries by sharing my art.

No Kings 3 in Boulder Creek

 

Yesterday we spent a few hours downtown in our little mountain community. There was a great turnout again for a No Kings demonstration., around 410 people by official count. Across the street from us was a marathon Jazzercise class going on for two straight hours. Very impressive and entertaining too. As people walked by they would join in dancing for part of a song.

Here's DH, along with a big crowd along the street in front of our fire station. The whole age range was represented from young to old, lots of dogs (some with costumes or signs included), people on crutches and mobility scooters.

A selfie on the bridge that heads into town, my sign says NO KINGS SINCE 1776. It was a lovely spot in the shade over the river. We were happy to have so many positive responses from drivers, people honking and waving, thumbs up, etc. We took note of the work vans with business names that honked.

This was the image on the other side of the sign I'm holding, an illustration from one of my favorite political comic artists, Tom Tomorrow.

Over the whole country, 8,000,000 - 9,000,000 of us were out there protesting at over 3,300 separate events. There were at least ten within a half hour's drive for us to choose from! There were also international events, at least one on every continent, even Antartica!

Happy 4th!

 We had a really big crowd come out for the annual 4th of July parade in Boulder Creek this morning. 

Our local radio station, KBCZ 90.3, had a flatbed trailer complete with a live band that was being broadcast. You can listen to the station on the website which is pretty nice and they also had a video livestream of the parade for people who couldn't come enjoy it in person.

This old car, maybe a Model T? Not sure, but the passenger compartment was lacquered wood!

I always get excited when I see a VW Bug in such nice shape. Mine was almost this color, but not alas not a convertible.

Someone was flying a drone up and down the parade route, I bet that's a dizzying video.

One of the many local tree service companies had a guy up on a redwood tree as they drove along. Another one had a big redwood log with someone wielding a chainsaw spraying the crowd with sawdust (aka Boulder Creek glitter!)

Here's the newest mural in our town, honoring Albert the locally famous wild white peacock who survived the CZU fire.

There was a great native plant display and sale from the San Lorenzo Valley Native Habitat Restoration Program. We bought these Clarkia seeds to try growing in our garden. One of this group's targets is invasive plants like the dreaded non-native and very invasive Himalayan Blackberry that attacked my leg recently, grrrr.

Lots of people swimming in the San Lorenzo river today, the Junction Park swimming hole and rock cliff jumping was packed.

That's all the local news for now, hope you're enjoying the day today too!

Wandering Wednesday - Quail Hollow Ranch

 Back to the ranch we went on MLK Jr. day, DH had the day off and DS joined us for a hike at Quail Hollow Ranch.

A lot of the trees are struggling for various reasons (drought, diseases, or old age), and are festooned with various opportunistic mosses and lichens. 

This tree was striking to me for the amazing amount of pinecones right on the branches. A lot of trees (and other plants) at the end of their life will throw out a huge last group of pinecones in the hopes of producing offspring. A good strategy that usually works.

We were quite impressed by the enormous Eucalyptus tree that had fallen over. What a sound this monster must have made when it hit the ground.

My two hikers next to the enormous root ball. I told them to pretend like they'd just pushed the tree over.

It really was impressive to walk around the destruction zone. 

I think this tree must have fallen after the last rains because the rootball seems to still hold all the dirt. Usually it gets washed out by the heavy rains we get.

A really really big mushroom had been placed on one of the fence posts. DS was pretty sure it was edible, but we decided not to risk it.

The pond was nice and full of water, several geese were bugging the people off to the right eating lunch so we weren't bothered. We got to sit and watch the pairs of ducks hunting in the pond which was a nice way to finish up the hike.

Wandering Wednesday - West Cliff Drive

 

Last weekend was DS's 29th birthday so we took him out to an awesome sushi dinner in Santa Cruz. He suggested a walk along West Cliff Drive. Even though it was close to sunset, we snagged a parking spot near one of the lovely curbside plantings. This is a Hooker's Evening Primrose, which I keep meaning to plant in our garden.

The late sunset was so soft and lovely, I really love the pastels in this picture.

A seagull had her nest way out on the point with the best view.

There were still a bunch of surfers out there catching the last waves of the day.

A little more sunset with one of the shoreline coves.

We made it as far as the lighthouse, which doubles as a surfing museum.

The birthday boy! 

Wandering Wednesday - The Big Basin Burn Scar

Last Sunday afternoon, DH and I were driving home on Highway 9 towards our town, Boulder Creek and the traffic came to a complete stop. Thankfully we were in a cell service zone, so I could check what was happening, unfortunately a head-on crash. One person helicoptered out to the higher level trauma hospital over at Stanford, and four more people in ambulances. We sat for a while and then decided to double back a bit and go through the much smaller Highway 236. This road goes through Big Basin Redwoods State Park.

I haven't been on 236 since the Lightning CZU Fires in August 2020. I'd seen the other side of the mountains from the Pacific Ocean in 2021 and it had really really bothered me. Gutted me, really. When you're a forest dweller, you tend to identify with the forest you live in, at least I do. So it's been four years and I knew it probably didn't look as bad as I'd been imagining by now.

This is from the top view looking back towards the unburned (so far at least) mountains where we live. 

The redwoods are mostly all still alive. They've lost their big wide branches, and now look like green furry phone polls or those fake cell phone "tree" towers. The usually reddish trunks are almost all a solid ashy black.

Really bizarre looking!

Most of the other sorts of trees are not showing much signs of life, the oaks, firs, pines, etc. at least in drive-by mode. Looks like the Redwoods will rule for a while. It's going to be so interesting to see what happens with this forest over the next few years. It seems to have things well in hand and underway to recovery with no help from us. That's how it should be I suppose. I'm relieved that we went through and saw it with our own eyes. Now I think I can go back and go for a hike. Big Basin has a couple of trails opened. It was very very strange to drive through the main part of the park and see no permanent buildings, they're all gone. But the trees are still there, that's the important part.

The Situation

 

So here's a pictorial adventure of our Situation. Over December (19")and January to date (17") we have had a total 36" of rain, That's too much for most mountainside communities. That's a normal amount for an entire rain year. For us personally, all that rain has meant that on our road we have a mudslide.

This is how it looked after our neighbor with a tractor and front scooper cleaned up the slide including downed dead trees. We are lucky that it only partially blocked our small road. And that he had to get to work.

Some organisms are quite happy with all the excess moisture.

There are mushrooms all over the place.

I don't know the names of these, just admiring them from afar, and certainly not foraging and taking the risk of eating them.

Further up the road, we come to the main issue, the reason we've been out of power continuously since 1/4. Trees came down and hit the power lines, snapping them off the power pole. Small dog for scale.

This is on the other side of the crossed trees over the road. You can see the power line coming down diagonally toward the pavement.

The line is being pulled out of the road by the red caution tape so that one car can just pass by.

You can see a small red diagonal line, that's the red caution tape holding back the power line. We've been assured that it's not live, but you never know, especially when they're working on getting the power back on.

The rest of the mountain we live on has had their power restored, but we have not. I guess because it affects so few people on our small road we got prioritized down lower on the list. Understandable, but still very frustrating. We're lucky to have the Powerwalls and a great generator (and lots of extension cords), but it's getting very very old. And still the rain keeps coming.