Sue Ann (Suna) Kendall

Keyhole Gardens: September 2019 Chapter Meeting

In case you aren’t following the Master Naturalist blog, I thought I’d share what I wrote up there about keyhole gardens. I’m going to get that book, for sure.

Nature Along the El Camino Real

by Sue Ann Kendall

We had a large turnout for this month’s meeting, where Linda Friedrickson and Aloma Clayton spoke on keyhole gardening (modified raised bed). They are members of the Little River Basin Master Gardeners, so many of our members who are in both organizations already knew them. Both of these women have lots of knowledge about keyhole gardens, and Linda even built one this year at her new property.

The book to read if you want to learn more is Soiled Rotten, by Deb Tolman, who is a fascinating person currently living in Texas and basing her life on creative recycling and reuse. Linda pointed out that keyhole gardens are a perfect example of Tolman’s philosophy, because you can build then from discarded material. Tolman makes gardens out of all sorts of things, including an abandoned speedboat.

Aloma and Linda appreciating their speaker gifts.

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Mystery of the Fuzzy Mat Plant

Sometimes you see something so often that you forget it is interesting. That’s the case for a weird plant I’ve been seeing on our driveway ever since we built it. It always looked like bits of cotton had gotten into one of the usual spurges that line our driveway.

Here’s the plant from a distance. You can barely distinguish it from the road base.

I finally got it into my head to take a photo of it an upload it to iNaturalist, so I could figure out what it was. I took the photo on our cutting board, hoping for better contrast.

Well, that didn’t go well at all. The plant simply does NOT photograph well, and the recognition algorithms couldn’t figure out what the thing was at all. It was guessing owls and such. I tried for a better photo, but didn’t get much further.

Was a Little Out of It

Sorry for the absence. I was limiting my screen time, and dealing with “issues”. Then, out of the blue I got a very weird headache yesterday that lasted until 8 pm. Stress? Stroke? Jostling from the car incident? No idea.

It rained, so rain lilies and their golden cousins pop up.

I was no good to anyone in the meeting I was at in the morning. I mostly worried people. But the wildflower brochure is being printed now!

Thanks to that brochure I hit the first post-certification milestone for Master Naturalist. 250 volunteer hours. That’s me and Lisa.

I managed to get some “real job” work done, and then begged out and got my nails done. Of course, Yoe High maroon and silver. Tina did a great job making up a technique!

The Good Folks

The Good Folks

The Good Folks
— Read on millenniallifecrisis.org/2019/09/09/the-good-folks/

Please read this. I really appreciate this fellow blogger.

And I truly am grateful for all the truly good people who have filled my life. Truly. (Repetition is not always bad.)

I Gots Nothin’

I hate to disappoint the readership, but today didn’t have much to it worth writing about, other than getting my neck looked at after the little accident, and some water droplets finally falling out of the sky. Both of those are good things, of course.

My thoughts on endless delays. But isn’t the avocado shirt from Target cute?

I spent most of the day sitting at my desk, back at work, dutifully doing the needful, and waiting for the results of a meeting. Finally, I asked that guy that sits next to me when the meeting was, and he admitted he was too chickensh** to tell me it had gotten postponed. I got a wry laugh out of that, I guess. Then I took a walk, like the consummate professional I am, followed by more needful doing.

I did get yet another new work laptop, because the previous new laptop would not display my third monitor, over-heated a lot, and kept refusing to come back after it went to “sleep.” I know I’m hard on displays, since each of my offices has a slightly different configuration, so that part didn’t surprise me. So far, the new one is churning along just fine, and I did get a cool screen background.

There are like 80 of these different color splotch backgrounds that rotate. Nice. New laptop at right. Tangle of wires at center.

Yep, that’s it. Highlight of my day, some blobs and some raindrops.

September 11 is never easy, anyway. As always, I will send out peaceful thoughts to whoever will accept them. Peace to you, readers. Remember those you love, and let them know.

Book Report: Remember Me Like This

First, thanks for the good wishes after the flying debris episode yesterday. I still have a mighty headache and a sore neck, but I’m staying home from work, taking ibuprofen, and have a convenient chiropractor appointment already scheduled for tomorrow. I’m not supposed to be looking at screens, so I am typing but not looking up except to fix typos. I am apparently driven to type!

The book

Bret Anthony Johnston is apparently very familiar with the Corpus Christi/Port Aransas area of southern Texas, which made his 2014 book, Remember Me Like This, a lot of fun for me. I used to go to the area every year with friends from my old church, until our Most Toxic Member Ever’s kid broke something and they refused to pay for it. I digress, again.

The other book referred to on the cover is a collection of stories. It won awards.

I’m glad the neighborhood book club chose this one, because it was not too gory or triggering for me (I m not fond of the “tiggering” thing, but that’s what happened in the last book, There There; I got sick to my stomach and could not read any further, even though I’d found it interesting up to then).

Things Fly from the Sky and Attack My Car

Greetings from my sick room. I’ve been sleeping off the medication I got when my coworker Maggie guided me to the ER, because I got all disoriented and weird at my 10 am meeting.

Huh?

It just wasn’t a good morning. I was very happy to get to work without incident, because I was still exhausted from the weekend. I was almost to my exit when eek! A large piece of something…perhaps fiberboard, came out of the sky over the truck in front of me. No time to react, I just watched it smash down on the hood of my car. It then flew off, and I hope didn’t hit any other car!

Recharge Time

This morning I waved goodbye to Eva and Joe, found out what was going on with the rest of the family, and realized I was gloriously alone for a while. Lee and Kathleen are still in west Texas, Mandi has other issues, we canceled Sunday dinner due to stress and confusion, so no visitors today. Alone.

Part 1

Of course, being me, I felt compelled to write up stuff for work blogs and volunteering blogs. And I’m late on my LLL newsletter, so I worked on that.

After 5 hours of writing, I’ve declared I deserve some recharge time. No one can keep going and going forever.

Family Stuff and Coping

Tell you what, it’s been a whirlwind around here the past couple of days. Lots of it’s been fun, but there has also been challenging stuff.

Me looking tired, but proud of my pink glass decanter to go with my orange glass.

Kathleen, Lee, and I have made a kind of unspoken pact to just go with the flow as our plans constantly shift due to weird circumstances. We’ve just been trying to start a business, deal with an elder care challenge, and remodel a building.

You can’t be sad if you have cherry pie with a paw print on it.

But all sorts of paperwork issues, legal surprises, scallywaggery (I made that up), illnesses, and twists and turns have meant schedules and priorities change at a moment’s notice. I’m proud of how patient we’ve been, though I think I could do better.

Just Having a Sit-Along

Today has been non-stop meetings, work, and networking, but it’s been fun. After working at my actual job all morning, we had another wildflower brochure meeting at the Hermit Haus.

I’m almost done with the brochure, thanks to lots of proofreading help. You can never see all your own typos. And I don’t spell in Latin well!

I took more Master Naturalist friends around the office, then some of us repaired to the Dutchtowne Deli for lunch. We had been talking about how we miss just hanging around and talking about things with each other, when John said that what we needed was to have a regular “sit-along,” (though that may not be the actual word he used, but I like it anyway).