May 2015 – Unleashed in Oregon

Yreka: There’s Real Life Beyond the Motels

The Yreka, California chamber of commerce is not going to tell you about this walk. Usually I walk downtown, where everything is closed, except for the bars. I pass historic buildings, intriguing stores, restaurants, and little parks, all very nice, but I have been staying in Yreka on my trips to and from San Jose for 19 years. It’s halfway and the Best Western always has vacancies, although the prices have doubled.

Tuesday night at dusk, I turned left instead of right to see what lay beyond the freeway. Past three freeway entrance/exits, under the bridge, past a lot of litter, and a deserted-looking train station, I found real life. Houses, school buses, a barking dog, warehouses across the street from new apartments, a YMCA with an exercise trail, and a cemetery, dating back to the mid-1800s.

I know this town has a lot of history. It was big in the gold-mining era, and now the miners’ descendants lie here. Many of the names are Portuguese, like my maternal ancestors. Some of the graves are marked with old white stones so weathered I can’t read the names. Some are not marked at all but are surrounded by iron fences. There are new graves, too, decorated with artificial flowers and flags left over from Memorial Day.

I’m poking around the graves when I see three deer a couple rows over. One seems to be standing guard as the others sniff at the flowers. They watch me, but they don’t run as I move closer, snapping pictures. Finally I get too close and they trot away. I look around at the surrounding yellow hills and wonder what I’ll see next as sunset pinks the clouds. I love the openness of this place, so unlike where I live surrounded by trees. Working my way back to the street, aware that it’s getting dark and I ought to get back to the safety of the motel, I smile at a man and woman walking two little dogs, part of real life on the other side of the freeway.

All these years, and I never thought to look. In the morning, before I got back on the freeway, I drove around Yreka a bit. Great Victorian houses, churches, schools, offices. The Best Western Miners Inn is good, but there’s more to see, just as there is at every freeway exit between here and there.

The Ducks Quacked, We Said ‘I Do’

It was a spring day like today, blue sky dotted with white clouds, a slight breeze, everything in bloom, as Fred and I hustled to prepare for our wedding. The second marriage for both of us, this was a do-it-ourselves affair. We were already living together in a house on the next block from my parents’ house. I had cooked raviolis the night before for our rehearsal dinner. We were having the reception in our back yard. I put on an embroidered dress from Mexico while Fred donned a Mexican wedding shirt. No tuxes, no ties. My bridesmaids wore knee-length ruby red dresses they could use again. Instead of hiring a photographer to follow us around, we gave our friends rolls of film and told them to take lots of pictures.

Our wedding took place 30 years ago today in an amphitheater beside a pond at Evergreen Community College in San Jose, California. As Rev. Carl Stocking led us through our vows, ducks quacked and a fishing competition took place nearby. We walked in to Pachelbel’s Cannon playing on the boom box. My father escorted me down the “aisle” for the second time, hoping this marriage would stick. While I felt faint and had an uneasy stomach during my first wedding, this time I felt only joy, which I saw mirrored in Fred’s face as we pledged to our lives to each other and came together in one of those famous Fred hugs.

Afterward, we adjourned to our yard, where Fred and my dad had set up tables and chairs borrowed from the recreation department where he worked, with blue plastic canopies from Mel Cotton’s sporting goods shop for shade. Our friend Pat Silva had prepared a Portuguese feast for us, with pork, beans, fruit, salads and more. We rolled my piano onto the patio, and Scotty Wright, our favorite jazz musician, provided music. Dancing, feasting, drinking, talk and laughter ensued as two families, Lick and Fagalde, became one. Recreation workers, journalists, Fred’s kids, my cousins, and so many more partied till sunset. It was the best wedding ever.

Looking at the pictures, it’s easy to feel sad. So many of those people are gone now. Fred died four years ago. On our 25th wedding anniversary, he was living in a nursing home and didn’t know who I was. Horrible. But I need to cling to the good memories of that day and the many anniversaries that followed. In addition to working for the city of San Jose, Fred was a licensed tax preparer. Everything went on hold from January through April, but come May, we would take a vacation. We traveled far and wide, celebrating anniversaries in Canada, Hawaii, Costa Rica, cruising the Mississippi River on the Delta Queen and many other places. Each year, we would remember this day and pledge our love again. It was a good marriage from beginning to end.

Thank you, Fred. Thank you everyone who was there. Cheers!

A Tale of Slugs, Mice and Bare Feet

There’s a slug way up high on my dining room wall. I can’t reach it with my hand. If I smack it with a broom, I’ll have slug guts on the white paint. What it’s doing up there I don’t know. I usually find them on my deck, my lawn, my sidewalk, my front door, or pigging out on the leaves of my plants. I pointed the slug out to my trusty dog, who is supposed to be guarding the house, but she was focused on the Milk-Bone box on top of the cabinet six feet below the slug. I guess we’ll wait until the slug moves of its own accord.

I’m using the computer very carefully today. For ages, my elbows have hurt, but now my left thumb is killing me. Apparently I have over-moused. I grip that plastic controller all day long, and now my thumb says STOP IT. I have changed mice, I’m consciously trying not to hold it so tightly and to let go when I’m not actually moving the cursor, but I know I’m doomed because I’ll forget as soon as I’m concentrating on a task. The worst culprit? Those online jigsaw puzzles to which I’m totally addicted. Maybe Saturday’s all-gray castle picture did me in. It hurts to hold a pen or pencil, too. I’m thinking about downloaded voice-activated software so I can just talk my stories into the computer.

I googled “mouse thumb” and discovered all kinds of listings. This is not an unusual problem. Most of links take me to folks who are trying to sell me ergonomic mice. One guy posted a YouTube video that alternates pictures of actual furry mice with him massaging his left thumb with his right hand. Amusing but not helpful. My point is that overuse of the mouse (or anything else) will lead to repetitive stress injuries. Our bodies are not built to squeeze a small plastic thing all day long. So if, like me, you’re doing that while you’re reading this, let go of the mouse. Take a break.

Meanwhile, my feet are a mess, too. All those dog walks have created a mass of calluses and sore places that will ultimately send me to the podiatrist. In an interview I read recently in The Sun, Harvard University professor Daniel E. Lieberman talks about how the human foot is not designed for shoes. We would be healthier walking barefoot, he says. Shoes cause us to slam our feet into the ground in unnatural ways that cause foot problems. He’s probably right, but I’m not walking barefoot on rocks, roots and berry vines. Annie does it, but she has leather pads to protect her paws. Me, I’m shopping for better hiking shoes.

Except for the hands and feet, I’m very well, thank you. And I survived another Mother’s Day. I tend to whine because I have neither children nor mother, and my friends keep posting pictures on Facebook of happy family gatherings and flower bouquets from their loved ones. So I boycotted Facebook for a day and played music with friends instead. I’m over it now. Safe for 364 more days.

Except that I have a killer slug in my dining room. Oh wait, I just went to look for it again, and it has vanished. Now where’s the slug? In my dishes? On the table? Here, slug. Let me introduce you to my mouse.

A Tale of Two Hydrangeas or Mother Nature is a Better Gardener than I Am

You may or may not know that I call my publishing company Blue Hydrangea Productions (check out my website and buy a book, okay?). I love blue hydrangeas, especially the kind popularly known as “mopheads.” They’re in my blood. My mother had them growing next to our front porch in San Jose. My grandfather had some along the side of his house in Seacliff, California. When Fred and I bought our house in South Beach, Oregon, a luscious blue plant bloomed by the front door. Clearly we were meant to live here.

The Azores Islands from which my mother’s ancestors came are covered with blue hydrangeas. Miles and miles of them, often used as fences. When we toured Faial years ago, our bus driver gave each of the women hydrangea flowers. I started sneezing, since I’m allergic to almost everything with leaves, fur or feathers, but that did not stop me from loving them.

Now, alas, something is wrong with my big hydrangea. A smaller plant nearby is loaded with leaves and just starting to bloom. But the big one, my company namesake, is mostly sticks with a few wan leaves. What’s up? I treated them both the same. I didn’t prune either plant last fall because I was in California taking care of my dad after he broke his hip, but that doesn’t explain the difference. Was it the snow and ice in Dec. 2013 that killed my hebes? Was it not enough rain in 2014? Have the blackberry vines that poke up through the branches choked the life out of the hydrangea? Is it the fact that I don’t mulch, fertilize or feed any of my plants? If nothing happens, I’m going to prune it down to nothing next fall and start fresh. Maybe I’ll even water it, which seems redundant on the rainy Oregon coast.

Meanwhile, my rhododendron is in full bloom, a gorgeous wash of magenta that will last a couple more weeks. And the weeds, oh, they’re doing well, some of them, like the one below, so spectacular I don’t have the heart to pull them out. I don’t know what they are, but who am I to argue with what comes up naturally in the middle of the coastal forest?

Visitors to my house will see rhodies in bloom, English ivy going crazy, blackberry, salmonberry and thimbleberry plants growing several inches every day, wild poppies, sword ferns, mystery weeds, and gigantic stick sculptures that used to be hebes and hydrangeas

For those fans who seem to think I’m good at everything, I’m not. Here’s proof. Welcome to my stick garden.

For information about hydrangeas, visit these sites:

Hydrangeasplus.com

http://www.waysidegardens.com/wg-hydrangea-guide/a/324/

https://plantcaretoday.com/hydrangea-care.html

http://www.hydrangeashydrangeas.com/