Midgets

These are my midget tomatoes. They have a lot of flavor in a wee bite.

And there are LOTS of 'em.

Duster

After the footings were poured, the metal forms went up for the walls.



Smell of oil and metal. Rebar. This is a big thing. I don't think we realized how big, although we wanted it done properly. This feels proper. Takes a while to do a job right, down to the dirt.




Yard sales a bit thin this week. But this reached out to me. An Australian duster, oilcloth coat. I fell a bit in love. Only $10 they wanted. I tried it on, and it hugged me back. I keep putting it on, smelling it. Vacuumed out the grit in the bottoms of the pockets.



#Resist.

Finches

So far, the footings and walls are up. We assume next are the plumbing underpipings, hopefully starting Monday. Big pile of dirt.


Moby had to investigate. He's getting frail and wobbly, but still making sure everything is going well. His vision also seems affected, he steps off edges when he clearly doesn't expect to. Dylan gets very sad about this. I try to keep in mind that he's still interested and moving.

I pulled a large rock out of the pile Wednesday, exposed after overnight torrential rains. Worker out there in boots bailing out the hole, so I put on my wellies, got a couple more buckets, and we got it done very quickly. I think the gutter just poured in rainwater, since the downspout had to be removed to do the work.



There was a pile of wet cement on the dirt pile Wednesday, so after they left, I shoveled it into the crack near the garage door, and reinforced the edge of the dirt where the bottles are buried. Waste not, want not.






Moby is still an elegant cat, with gravitas.




And it rained, two nights in a row. The first caused flash flooding in areas around the valley. One high school got badly damaged. A branch library had 6' of water in the lower levels, losing the whole children's and non-fiction sections, and will be closed for 3 months for repairs. My garden is quite happy, as are the weeds. Or the weeds were, until I easily pulled them up by their roots. Weeding when it's very dry is not very useful.

Sitting on the front porch, watching the finches feast on sunflower seeds and battle furiously.

Excavation

Left the car home, took bus up to work yesterday, walked home. It wasn't bad, although my feet were pretty tired. 2.5 miles downhill. Very small schedule.

The reason was to avoid having to park somewhere on the street, since the driveway would be full of equipment and workers.



Concrete is down now, rebar sticking out. The guys were soaked with sweat, as the humidity yesterday was way up, dewpoint in the 60s. I sat on the porch and watched as they loaded concrete into wheelbarrows. My neighbor, who is 2 1/2 watched from her porch as well.

A... well, possibly a crank on twitter (whodathunk?) says to prepare for a spasm of societal upheaval. White nationalist provocateurs, power interruption, riots. And yes, it sounds nuts, but it's not out of the question, these things have happened before. They urge us to be prepared. Which we really should be, just as for a flood, blizzard, earthquake, tornado, fire. Have a 72 hour kit prepared, shelf stable food, water, flashlights, batteries, radio, meds, first aid kit.

I thought about riots. I was very small during the Detroit riots in '67. We drove through the aftermath, burnt out storefronts is all I can recall. And I wondered, where would riots happen in Salt Lake City? The answer came to me really before the question. Rio Grande area, where the homeless shelter is, and the overflow of people camp out. And they spread out into surrounding areas, sleeping rough in doorways and bus shelters, as I saw on my way to the bus yesterday morning. One on the concrete outside the door to the mattress store. I felt both compassion, the irony, and the irritation of having to see that.

Not pretty, to know I have that evil impulse, to be repulsed by the misfortune of a fellow human being. But there is in all of us the hatred of that which we fear in ourselves. Aggressive panhandling is awful, I feel my anger rise. In that situation, I would wish not to live. I've given up on life for far less. My lust for life has never been strong, mostly had to work very hard on it.

Entitled bigots would have far fewer restraints, would indulge their darkest impulses instead of looking inward. Especially if they were pretty sure they'd get away with it.


We hate our own poverty and misfortune, our strangeness among our own, some externalize it to the point of fury.

Take care of yourselves, stay safe, keep your compassionate hearts, build, protect. Have some water and jerky in reserve.

Cement

They came by on Thursday and did the remaining demolition. This is my view from the car in the garage Friday morning before I left for work. They plan to come back on Tuesday to clear the debris and pour cement in the afternoon.

Tried to hit a few yard sales, but the street is partly closed for one of the parades for Days of '47, i.e Pioneer Day. A state holiday, and much bigger than the 4th of July here. One of the perils of living downtown, we get the odd parade and marathon closure. We went out, hoping to do other errands. But it's already hot, and I lost interest after the first one. The rest were much farther and the traffic here will only get worse. There are several later in the day, we may venture out. We may not. Hard to tell.

Did go back out. Got some lightswitch covers at an estate sale.

"We cannot live in a world that is interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a home. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening. To use our own voice. To see our own light."
- Hildegard of Bingen

Jazz

Jazz. This makes me so happy.

Stripped

Contractor came by yesterday, contract signed, payment made. These might illustrate better what is here.



My head started reeling/and it started feeling/like there was no ceiling or floor.

That song from Cinderella keeps going through my head for some strange reason...

Tidied

Tidied up the pile, so that the rest of the porch floor was clear. Contractor coming Monday, hoping to pour concrete sometime around next weekend. I've done a substantial bit of the demolition.

\

Offering the salvageable wood on our nextdoor.com, free of course. No idea if anyone will want it. Too much paint for me to want it for the potential greenhouse. This should make it a bit easier to put in the skip. Making a sign for the front parking space for our neighbor when the skip is in the driveway.

Whole lotta nails, splinters. I'm handling it all slowly and with care. Thought about a guy I worked with at the library decades ago. He had a lugubrious manner, reserved. Seemed not to be doing much, and that slowly. But, somehow, all his materials got shelved. I eventually figured out, he just never stopped. He was like the tide coming in. When I have a difficult, tedious, or potentially dangerous job to do, I think of him, and try to be like him. Mostly, I like to work quickly, then relax. Some jobs, that is entirely the wrong approach.

Bergamot

Unexpected day off yesterday. Felt wrong footed all day as well. But got some stuff done.

More evident that Moby has vision issues. I no longer bother with the harness when we take him out. He doesn't move that fast, and is intermittently, heartbreakingly hesitant. Still. Loves going out, thin, but still active. Slow, but still getting around. So, we watch, and take care of him as best we can.




Eleanor in rude good health.


Spotted the most lovely black bee with golden wings on the bergamot this morning.



The mexico midget tomatoes are tiny, but nice, and lots of 'em. About the size of a large pea. Had to deal with a slug infestation on one plant. More and more earwig oil traps, all getting lots of the little bugges. Still no noticeable rain since May.

The contractor will be coming on Monday to start work on the porch, concrete maybe Friday, maybe Monday next.

Is it so odd that I'm considering this still important, in case we need to take in a refugee? Like, Anne Frank sort of thing? I don't need anyone telling me how much danger I'm in, I can imagine the worst case without prompting.

Trying to stay pragmatic and determined.

Lucky

Some more destruction, to make way for new.



Not a lot more I can do, although I'm taking a hard look at the floor boards tomorrow. Strange offering to Shiva, to clear away and destroy, to allow for new growth.

Found a beer can under there, that suggests a date for the porch enclosure, 1965-67.



A logo used late '60s, local brewery closed in '67.

Contractor may be by next week.

Dylan fervently hopes so.

Yes, Black Lives Matter, and the rise of kkkism, white terrorism, violent rhetoric, worries me deeply.

The world goes to war.

But, part of me wonders if this isn't the earth dosing itself with medicine, to reduce the excess humanity infection. A global autoimmune purge, with plagues to follow. Humans causing too much damage, so the planet using neoplastic methods to shrink the malignant tumor of homo sapienicemia.

Jumpy

Jumping Jellybean.




A petition to save the world.

Rather quiet for a firework holiday last night. A few booms from what were likely official fireworks. A small number of closer ones. Very subdued.

Of course, the big firework holiday here is Pioneer Day, on the 24th.

Demolition

I may have taken this a little too far. Especially since we don't have a date for the concrete people to do the footings. Contractor will do the demolition first, with a skip. I got the windows out long ago. Today, I found the pry bar, got out my trusty hammer, and, well...

One of my favorite stories about my mother was when she took a sledge hammer to a wall in their small, cramped house one day. My father had to fix up an archway right after that. One of those post-WWI tract houses built for minimal heating, tiny rooms being easier to keep warm. They did a lot to that shoddy little house over the years. Not a happy place for me, but they did try to make it stable.

Dylan a bit worried about this, but there is a deadlock on that door. It was already broken this is just opening it up. Getting some of the work done. Saving us a bit of demolition cost.

Nothing like clearing away rotten wood, stripping away the broken and obstructive.

Another yellow rosebud, a golden celebration. The catnip hugs the stones.



Had another conversation with the little boy who breaks my onions, and his mother. She's at wits end with his energy. I have nothing to offer her but a kind ear. I suspect he's just very bright and energetic, he asks good questions, then hares off. Younger brother in stroller, who Onion boy says "likes white people." Mom unsure what to say, I take it as a straightforward statement, smile and let him chatter. She seems to be an immigrant of no more than a few years, she asks about my garden, as people do.

Trying to be a good neighbor.

Calm

"There is the inner life of thought which is our world of final reality. The world of memory, emotion, feeling, imagination, intelligence and natural common sense, and which goes on all the time consciously or unconsciously like the heartbeat.

There is also the thinking process by which we break into that inner life and capture answers and evidence to support the answers out of it.

And that process of raid, or persuasion, or ambush, or dogged hunting, or surrender, is the kind of thinking we have to learn, and if we don't somehow learn it, then our minds lie in us like the fish in the pond of a man who can't fish."
- Ted Hughes
Via Whiskey River

My own inability to create or even read more than pertinent articles, worries me. I'm staying calm, to the point that people at work are telling me how calm I am, easy to eat lunch with, patient. I know I did the ptsd work, but I also know I get unnaturally calm in a crisis. Waiting, alert.

Trying not to feel much. Hyper-vigilant.

That rather lovely volunteer grass of spring is the kind I now know puts out the nasty spiky seeds. I'm working on digging them out of the now hard baked clay, raking away what I can. In fall, when it hopefully rains, I'll plant clover. Catching massive numbers of earwigs in my soy/oil traps. At least our water situation in the mountains and reservoirs is good this year. Even though it hasn't rained this month.