Category Posts

Autumn #ThursdayDoors

JT Twissel 23 Comments

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.

Can you see the lighthouse swatch that inspired her design and colors?

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.

The other side of the mural.

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

I’ll try again

JT Twissel 19 Comments

A couple of days ago I complained that WordPress had eaten my post but not the images I’d uploaded for the post.

We finally got some rain, not enough to put a dent in our drought but enough to slow many of the wildfires burning west and north of here.

Many of you were nice enough to try to shed some light on what might have happened.

  • Hugh, from Hugh’s News and Views, suggested that the post was in quarantine pending a review by WordPress. Hugh’s a brilliant guy who knows just about everything about blogging but I didn’t write anything nasty enough to be censored. However, I checked and guess what? What he meant (which I misinterpreted) is that, if your site has been infected by malware, it will be quarantined until the malware is snuffed. Generally you will receive an email if this happens but not always. Especially if you have multiple email addresses like I do. So, thanks once again Hugh!
  • A few bloggers suggested that I may not have saved the post before publishing it. That could well have been true.
  • Yvonne at Priorhouse told me to turn on two factor log in asap. An excellent idea!
  • Anon, blogging over at Anonymole – apocryphal alligators, suggested that I had two versions of the post open and saved the wrong draft. Also possible. I’m generally doing two things at once.

But instead of guessing, I have put a question into the Happiness Engineers. Thanks everyone for your help!

Kitty posing next to a collage done by a friend of mine named Craig DelGaudio He cuts ads out of magazines and pastes them on torn pieces of cardboard and then he singes the edges. Kitty is definitely in need of a new cat condo, isn’t he?
Kitty posing next to another piece of art. A train trestle for Joel’s model train layout. This piece took him all summer to assemble. He’s very meticulous about some things. Not everything — like his bathroom, sigh.

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.

WordPress just ate the content of my post

JT Twissel 19 Comments

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?

Mouth Magic, Craig DelGaudio

The images I uploaded were all there in the Media Library so I don’t know what to think. Any suggestions?

A good use for baffles: #ThursdayDoors

JT Twissel 30 Comments

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.

Bye Penito – see you in another two years!

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.

Almost over

JT Twissel 30 Comments

Soon Penito will be finished blossoming and who knows what will happen next.

At least the bees have been showing him some love.

Can you see him?

Here is my artistic rendition, sans bee:

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.

A close up for Anon

Literature’s most despicable character

JT Twissel 28 Comments

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.

Apparently no British murder mystery/thriller is complete without Dame May Whitty showing up at the end to exclaim “Well!”

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.)

Literature’s Most Despicable Character – the manipulative husband – boo, hiss.

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.

Meanwhile the blossoming continues toward the tip.

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?

A reason to venture into the heat

JT Twissel 18 Comments

It continues to be toasty here with no sign of rain on the horizon. In such weather I tend to stay indoors until the sun starts to set which is thankfully earlier and earlier. But it’s not easy to get pictures of Penito and child in the shadows of the giant pine trees that line our property and block the setting sun.

This shot was taken at about 2:30 this afternoon. As you can see, lots more blossoms! I tried to capture the bee who was checking things out but he spotted me and took offense. Luckily I managed to escape his ire.

Mother Penito is now up to my eyebrows.

Eye to eye

It’s hard to get a good shot in the blazing sun but, as the blossoms cascade up the stalk, the ones left behind close. They still cling to the mother but they will not reopen. Once the blossoms reach the tip, all of them will close. The bereft stalk will struggle to stay erect, and then, lay down to rest for at least a year.

In the shadows of late afternoon. Mother is leading the way.