Sunny and cold, the big rains of November behind us. Yesterday an earthquake shook the coast from Oregon down to San Francisco and beaches and harbors were evacuated for a few hours until the tsunami warnings were lifted.
The town is an actual town again right now as opposed to a tourist depot, and though I know the many visitors support local businesses, I prefer life in a town full of people who actually live here and move at a pace more akin to mine – slowly.
Today I did a little shopping at Corners and picked up the mail at the post office, then walked around on the headlands, the weather balmy, Canadian Geese browsing the field on the south side of Main Street, gulls and ravens circling over the bay, and not another human in sight for the duration of my twenty-minute ramble on the edge of the sea.
These last days leading up to the enthronement of Trump and his cronies have the feel of a lull before a storm. And speaking of storms we are very glad for the good rain at the end of November and we’re hoping for more rain ere long, though I must say the old bones like these warm days.
I start the fire in the woodstove in the early afternoon and it keeps the house warm until bedtime. My dreams of late have been even more absurd than usual. Not quite nightmares, but leaning that way.
The pomegranates have been stellar of late, as have the Brussels Sprouts. I only recently figured out how to cook Brussels Sprouts to my liking, and now I prepare them all the time. I cut off the tough ends, cut them in half, douse a pile of these halves with olive oil, toss them with good curry powder until well coated, and then bake them on a cookie sheet face down in the oven at 425° for eight to ten minutes, flip them with a spatula, bake another five minutes. Voila.
Work on the new novel goes well. I will begin narrating the audio book version later this month and hope to publish the book in all modalities in March, barring bothersome societal/economic upheavals.
I pruned the trees in our little apple orchard yesterday, an easy fun job because the trees are all small and I don’t need a ladder to do the snipping. Some of the trees are small because they are dwarf varieties, and some are small because they are growing in ground dense with redwood roots and thus cannot grow large. In any case, they produce enough apples most years for us to make a big batch of our yummy Hummingbird Hollow Apple Yum.
This is my report.
fin
Mystery Pastiche piano/bass duet from Todd’s CD Mystery Inventions