
Morning #WordlessWednesday



Believe it or not, this is a screen door. Not just any old screen door but one that is virtually impossible to break into. Plus, can you see the person beyond the steel reinforced screen?
If you’re lucky, once you get beyond this door she’ll show you some of her wonderful quilt work.


She has an amazing quilting room with, what looked like, thousands of swatches and two industrial strength sewing machines that scared the life out of me because I flunked sewing in Home Econ. If I were to write a story ala Stephen King, it would star a demonically possessed Singer Sewing Machine — complete with evil pedals. And the evil thimbles and spools! My friend keeps the devil from her door by creating soft and cuddly quilts and pillow cases for children in foster care. She’s amazing!
If you can convince her to show you her garden, here is the marvelous mural on her back garden wall.

There is a sad story behind this mural. The lady who painted it had just lost a child and my friend had just lost her mother. But together they worked through their grief and this mural is a testimonial to both of them.

And … I came home with some homegrown tomatoes from her garden. A great day. Check out other doors at Dan Anton’s place.

This post is part of Hugh’s News and Views WordlessWednesday event.
For all my friends who are quilt artists! Enjoy!

Today, I walked 17,000 steps and climbed Kilimanjaro. And it was all done indoors. How? Why? Tomorow and Sunday the quilt group the Textiliste belongs to hosts their bi-annual exhibition. Long time readers may recall they held a special last year, as a What did you do during Covid themed show, but this was back […]
Being Blown Away — TanGental
A couple of days ago I complained that WordPress had eaten my post but not the images I’d uploaded for the post.

Many of you were nice enough to try to shed some light on what might have happened.
But instead of guessing, I have put a question into the Happiness Engineers. Thanks everyone for your help!


Okay guys, I’ve saved this post three times! So I’ll add one last thing – an image gallery of my friend’s artwork for your amusement. My favorite collage is Pep up your parts! What do you think it was an ad for?
Pressing publish and hoping I’m not sending y’all a blank post.



I just published a post entitled “Rain, the cat and the trestle” and when I went to check on it, all the images were gone as was the text. The original post wasn’t in “Trashed” bin so I don’t know what happened. Has this ever happened to any of you?

The images I uploaded were all there in the Media Library so I don’t know what to think. Any suggestions?
Today’s another hot day here in Northern California. It won’t be as hot as earlier this week, the weatherman claims, but it’s already 98 degrees (F). So do I believe him? We’ll see.
But I did get out early enough to take a few Thursday doors snaps – the doors to this utility box are on the other side.
But these are the doors for this utility box. Check out other doors at Dan Antion’s place!
Meanwhile I’ve been going through a huge pile of home improvement books that I found stuffed in a cabinet we rarely use. Most of them were published by Reader’s Digest, Sunset Magazine, Better Homes and Gardens and Time/Life books back in their heydays (fifty years ago). They cover just about anything you’d need to know to build and maintain a house (and garden.) Of course, changing light bulbs these days is a struggle for us. So they won’t be going back in the cabinet. I’m not sure anyone will want a book on solar heating and cooling that was published in 1978. But I doubt the basics of electricity and plumbing have changed that much.
I did find an interesting article on installing a deer proof fence.

It turns out that deer shy away from baffles (see lower left of image). So if you don’t want deer in your yard, just build a maze! There’s another interesting idea for gopher proofing a yard. Let me know if you’d like me to post it.
The heat has done in Penito. Alas.

Whelp, it looks like old Charlie will finally get to be the king. Sigh, for the next several days, I’m sure it’s all we’ll hear about.
Soon Penito will be finished blossoming and who knows what will happen next.

At least the bees have been showing him some love.



We’re heading into a potentially deadly heat wave which always causes our power company, the notorious PG&E, to fly into conniptions. Turn off unnecessary lights! Set your AC to 78 degrees! Don’t run major appliances between 4 and 8 at night. The grid is straining, the grid is straining. Oh my!
So we may lose power at any time. Thankfully I have plenty of books and a basement which is generally twenty degrees cooler than the upstairs. Hope you are all managing to stay cool during these hopefully final hot days of summer.

The other night I watched the 1944 movie, Gaslight. In a nutshell, it’s about a man who tries to drive his wife crazy by telling her that things she knows to be true are figments of her imagination. It’s set in Victorian London thus there’s plenty of fog and gas lamps and horse drawn buggies. All very shadowy and surreal.

Most of the action takes place in a mansion the wife has inherited after the unsolved murder of her famous aunt. Every time the husband goes out at night, his wife notices that the gas lamps flicker and she hears noises in the attic. The only other witness is a half deaf housekeeper until … (well I won’t ruin the ending but I guarantee, you’ll want to reach through the screen many times and strangle poor Charles Boyer, the actor who played the husband.)
So who was the author of Gaslight you might ask? I could have sworn it was Alfred Hitchcock but it was Patrick Hamilton, considered by many of his peers to be “a marvelous novelist who’s grossly neglected” (Doris Lessing). He died in 1962 after producing only a handful of novels. However, I checked and apparently there’s a fairly steady market for his work, particularly The Slaves of Solitude (1947). You just never know.

Leaving behind spend blossoms. So sad. But that’s life.

Anyway, now you know who I consider literature’s most despicable character. Who’s yours?