October 5 was my dear friend Rico’s 74th birthday. Rico died five years ago and he’s always in my thoughts more than usual on his birthday. I communicate with Rico’s older brother Steve on the day, and this year Steve sent me a picture of Rico circa 1988 that made me glad somebody invented photography.
My friend JB Reynolds sent me some nasturtiums seeds a few years ago, and now nasturtiums are a year-round part of our garden scene. I no longer have to plant them. They just come up where they want to be, and this year they made a wonderful display on our orchard gate, a display so lovely that several passersby have stopped to have their pictures taken with the nasturtium wall as backdrop.
We have a feral cat in the neighborhood who includes our acres in his/her ranch, which is the technical term for a cat’s domain. I see him/her a few times a year, and recently he/she was sneaking by my office window and I got this picture. He/she is a brilliant hunter and since his/her arrival we no longer have gophers. Bravo cat!
Our friend Bill Fletcher is a fellow gluten-free baker, and after we sampled his delicious homemade tortillas, Marcia got a tortilla press to make tortillas and chapatis. Today we made chapatis combining sweet potato puree, chickpea flour, and Indian spices. Yum.
I’ve been finding the news of the greater world and the machinations of those in charge of our national government extremely upsetting, so much so I am now limiting my intake of outside news to a little bit in the morning, and nothing in the afternoon or evening because all that horror infects my psyche and ruins my sleep, which is easily ruined.
I don’t want to stick my head in the sand, but I don’t want to be a sleep-deprived zombie either.
My sense is that those in charge of our national government do not want there to be another free and fair election. I think Trump sending troops into cities where troops are not needed is a tactic to prepare the nation for his suppressing the next election on the pretext of some fake crisis.
Portland and Chicago and Los Angeles, contrary to what Trump and his minions keep saying, are not war-torn hellholes, though sadly millions of people believe this nonsense because they get their news from right wing propaganda stations.
In happier news, today we harvested the last of our apples and will soon be making apple huckleberry jam by adding our apples to the several quarts of huckleberries we harvested from the bushes on our property.
Take Care