Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

Today was a crazy day.  The plan was to leave for Santa Barbara sometime between 10 and 11.  But there was so much to be done first.  With first my computer problems and then Walt's computer problems (he's now dealing with the guru), and Jeri arriving, and so many shows to review and a feature article to write...things just kind of got away from us ... me, more than Walt, who has been doing the yeoman's share of getting the house cleaned up for Ashley and David to move in.

Jeri planned to go to Atria at 8 and have breakfast with my mother and then we would pick her up on the way out of town. But I was dubious about the "8" part.  She says she's always up at 7, but I don't believe it.  And, in fact, Jeri decided to make it 9, called her at 8:30 to let her know she was coming and woke her up.

While waiting, she made yet another attempt to make friends with Polly, who is much more willing to be friendly if food is involved, but the minute Jeri stands up, it's bark-bark-bark all the time again.

In the meantime I was still struggling with no Internet and trying to decide where I could go to post yesterday's journal entry...and then in a doh moment remembered that Atria has wifi, so I drove Jeri over to my mother's and planned to do the few things I had to do on the internet and then go home and finish the other things I had to do.

We took our annual "Grandma and Jeri" photo and Jeri had to take a Baldy and Grandma picture.

Unfortunately, the Atria wifi was being temperamental and I got this journal uploaded but it stalled when I tried to upload Airy Persiflage.  I completely forgot that I needed to e-mail the article I finished writing at 1 a.m. to the Enterprise.

I went off to the store and bought goodies for Ashley and then came home to call Omsoft Technical help.  I ended up practically in tears and pulling the "old age" card by wailing "Look.  I'm 72 years old and I just can't follow what you're saying," as he tossed question after question to me that I couldn't answer.  

Ultimately, he agreed to send someone out to fix the router, if Ashley will let him know when it's convenient for her.  In the meantime, Walt managed to connect the modem to the computer so at least my desktop has internet access and I could upload Airy Persiflage and send my article to the newspaper.

I wrote a long note to Ashley telling her about certain things and then discovered that when Steve set up the new computer, he set the printer to be wireless, which means I can print from any wireless device, but I can't print if there is no wifi.  So I left the note on the computer screen and left Ashley a note to check the screen to read it!

There was still the house to be cleaned.  Walt was working like a champ, gathering mountains of dog hair and dustbunnies, changing the linens on the guest bed and anything else that needed to be done.  I found the kitchen table under all the stuff piled on it, folded some laundry and did a little cleaning in the guest bathroom.  I also packed my suitcase and got ready to leave.

We finally got on the road at 1 p.m. and picked Jeri up at Atria.  The plan was to drive down I-5 and then cut over to 101 using Hwy 37 (the highway on which James Dean was killed--there is a small memorial to him there), which, in previous years, has presented a glorious display of wildflowers in wet years.  Someone had posted a photo on Facebook of an unbelievable field of poppies which looked like it was in the area I was thinking of.

Jeri had mentioned wanting to try 5 Guys for burgers for lunch and there are several locations along 101, but only two along I-5.  We tried our GPS to find the first one and though it got the address right, it led us to a cul de sac of private homes instead of a fast food joint.  We gave up and headed for the next one, which ended up being about 15-20 miles out of our way.  Jeri decided that since it was now about 3 p.m. and we still had about 6 hours of driving ahead of us, 5 Guys was not a priority.

We found a Carl's Junior, and as we pulled into the parking lot, I was checking my "boycott" list of businesses run by the Koch Brothers.  Carl's Junior was one of them, but at that point I decided I just didn't care.  I would give them my business.  But just this once.  (It was heartening, though, to see that of all the fast food joints in this particular area, this was the one with almost no customers)

When I returned from a trip to the ladies' room, Walt and Jeri looked so cute, I had to take their photo.

Just 90 miles until we turned off onto Hwy 37.  I got my camera ready.  It is an hour from I-5 to 101 and the wildflower place is about halfway, so I waited patiently.  And waited.  And waited.  There were no wildflowers.  Well, that's not true.  Jeri saw ONE poppy, but the colorful fields I had hoped to see were nothing but brown grass.  Such a disappointment.

But we continued our way down 101 to Santa Barbara and it was so good to get here finally.  Jeri got a chance to show Alice Nan and Joe the photos on her iPad from her record-shattering Boston winter.

And there is wifi here, so I don't have to deal with anything technological for two days.  In the morning we are going to watch Brianna play softball, which I know will be fun.

I hope my bald head doesn't scare the kids!

Oooo...Look at THAT!

I remember distinctly the first time I took a snapshot that didn't have people in it.  I was in grammar school and had just received my Brownie box camera for Christmas and was determined to "make memories" with it.  I was the babysitter for a neighborhood family, who decided to bring me along on their vacation to Lake Tahoe so I could take care of the two kids while they went out to the casinos.

It was an afternoon when I guess we were going to take the kids down to the lake and the father, the kids and I (with my camera...even then it was my constant companion!) were walking down a hill in back of the cabin they had rented.  The hill was covered with rocks.  I looked behind me and I can still remember that there was just something about those rocks, the way they were lying, the way the light was hitting them, the shadows on the ground...something.

I stopped to take a picture and the Dad made fun of me for taking a picture of a bunch of rocks.  I couldn't explain to him why they had struck me as something beautiful that I had to photograph.  Of course it was only a box camera and when the photo came back from the developer it looked just like a pile of rocks, not the beautiful thing my mind had seen.  But it was the start of my love of photography.

The other day someone on Facebook posted some photos of wildflowers he had seen about a half hour's drive from here.  I am a sucker for the purple lupine and orange poppies that bloom on California hills in years with sufficient rainfall.  Knowing how much she loves nature, I wanted to take my mother to see them.

I very nearly did NOT take her.  When we went to pick her up, she was not in her apartment, so I went to check the dining room, where she was just finishing her lunch.  I walked up to her table and when she saw me she jumped back and got that "you've just stuck dog poo in my face" look again.  She told the two women that she didn't know me and didn't want to know me and didn't I look disgusting.  

That just hit me wrong (I'm obviously too sensitive) and I got angry with her.  She got her feelings hurt and one of her luncheon companions calmed me down and told me about when her son had donated his long hair to a group that made wigs for cancer patients.  She told me I was doing a beautiful thing. I wish my mother would tell me that.

My mother never said anything about how disgusting I look again, but I don't care if she does have dementia, if she continues to act like I've thrown dog feces at her every time she looks at me, I just won't go see her for awhile.  I'll send Walt to deliver her meds.  It bothers me that of all the good qualities I have admired about her through the years, the only one that seems to be sticking with her dementia is her vanity, which I have found her least desirable quality!

But this isn't about that, it's about wild flowers.

We drove out through the town of Winters went into the hills.  I was hoping that we weren't too late but then all of a sudden we were in the thick of it.

Everywhere we looked the hills were carpeted in purple lupine.  If you look carefully at the top in about the middle of the photo you will see a bright patch of orange poppies.

The purple carpet kept rolling along and then suddenly there was a carpet of poppies blanketing the hill.

It almost hurt the eyes, it was so beautiful.  We found a place to pull over where I could get some photos and I loved this patch of the two mixed together.

I think my mother enjoyed the ride.  She did seem to like the flowers, but enjoyed the greenery more.  But we eventually drove home and dropped her off.  I told her I would be by tomorrow to bring her meds.  I think she may still have been smarting from my brief outburst at lunch because she was very quiet.  THAT she'll remember.  What she ordered for lunch or the names of her great grandchildren, she doesn't.

But I had a great time and loved looking at all that beauty, which lasts for such a brief time that I always feel very lucky when I am able to catch it.

Fifty Shades of Green

I grew up in San Francisco.  In San Francisco, I didn't know from "seasons."  It could be hot in December, cold in June.  Mark Twain is attributed with a quote I have read that he never actually said, but whoever made it up, it is appropriate:  The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.  It was always fun for the natives to giggle at the tourists standing on street corners in the summer, shivering in their shorts and short-sleeved shirts, thinking that because the sun was shining and it was summer, it would be warm.  Silly people.

It wasn't until I moved to Berkeley, after graduating from high school, that I experienced "seasons."  Oh I knew what seasons were supposed to be like, of course, but seeing them myself was a new experience.  The Japanese cherry trees that burst into blossom in front of Newman Hall in the spring, the trees that burst with yellow flowers in the summer, which smelled wonderful and caused a lot of sneezing among people living with them.  People's lawns with spring flowers.   Campus trees that turned orange in the fall. It was a whole new world to me.

There was a big apartment building across the street from our flat (where the owner of Seabiscuit lived) and on the corner of that apartment building was a bush that bloomed occasionally, but to this date, I don't know what kind of a bush it was. (It may have been Scotch broom.)  Any time there was an occasion where my parents wanted to have a photo taken, it was always standing in front of that bush.  Years of photos taken standing in front of that bush!  First communion, Easter Sunday, Christmas, birthday parties.  Always in front of the pathetic bush!

If we wanted trees or greenery, we had to drive to Golden Gate Park, or out into the country somewhere.

This must have been difficult for my mother, who grew up on a farm and who has loved flowers and trees and greenery her whole life.

She and my father finally moved out of San Francisco sometime after David was born (so around 1972-5), and into a house in Marin County, across the Golden Gate bridge.  Here there were trees and grass and though my parents' place didn't have a LOT of greenery because the back yard was mostly the pool my father loved so much, my mother could at least tend to some flowering plants around the edges and see trees and lawns when she went driving around town.

What she loved was to go for a drive somewhere green.  I remember her marveling at how many different shades of green there were in Armstrong Woods, through which we drove to reach my grandparents' farm in Inverness.  I saw (but did not read or save) an article the other day about how many shades of green human eyes are able to distinguish.  Stand in an area of trees, grass and flowers some time and look around you at how different each green thing is.  Sometimes the shades are blatant, but if you look at a  hillside covered with trees, it seems that each tree is just ever so slightly a different shade of green from the ones around it.  It's a marvel.

My mother doesn't leave Atria often.  She spends her time sitting in her chair looking out on the courtyard beyond her patio and after a winter of complaining that the trees were so ugly without leaves, now she just loves how green they are, since they have leafed out.

The few times I have taken her out recently, her conversation is mostly marvel about how green things are, how beautiful the mature trees are.  I took her out to see some yards when flowers first started blooming this spring and she loved that, but more than that she just literally luxuriated in seeing all the trees.   It's a joy I cannot share on the same level.  I see nice streets.  She sees it on a whole different emotional level.

The other day I read about a plot of land in South Davis which had been planted in wildflower seeds and which was now blooming.  I knew my mother had to see it.  She would love it, I knew.  I made it an adventure.  I showed up at her apartment unannounced and told her I had to show her something.  I wouldn't tell her what it is, just loaded her in the car and took off.

It was a beautiful, sunny day.  The perfect day to see wild flowers.  And it was beautiful.  Poppies, and all sorts of other flowers in red, blue, purple and yellow.  It was a feast for the eyes.

As I knew she would, my mother loved the flowers, but didn't want to get out to look at them more closely.

But I did and took lots of pictures, then we drove back to Atria again.  While she loved looking at the wild flowers and I was very glad that we went to see them, it was still the tall, full trees on every street that we drove that seemed to give her the most pleasure.  In fact, I tried to drive home on the streets where there were the most trees because it was so much fun listening to her exclaim about how beautiful they were.

Hunting Wildflowers

I went on a wildflower hunt today, which is just the sort of thing you want to do before starting an 8 hour drive home! But I decided to take the trip up Figueroa Mountain and see if I couldn't see some of those wild flower displays that I read about in the Santa Barbara newspaper.

Walt and Alice Nan left the house before 7:30 and I was out of there by 8:30. I felt guilty leaving, knowing that they were going to be facing all sorts of decisions today, but at least Alice Nan was able to take the day off work, so Walt wouldn't have to do it alone...and I had to get home.

I started by driving into Santa Barbara and picking up the road that goes up into the mountains. I drove to the town of Los Osos, where the road up to Figueroa Mountain begins, but I stopped in the town itself at a lovely little coffee shop that had Peet's French Roast coffee and chocolate croissants. What better way to start the day.

Then I headed up toward the mountain. I was interested to note that this long past Michael Jackson's death, without the mourners and the notes and flowers outside the gate, the Neverland Ranch is hardly noticeable as you drove by.

I passed through a huge field, filled with mustard blossoms as far as the eye could see.

I also passed by one field which was carpeted with mustard and lupin and was gorgeous.

Based on the newspaper article, I expected the views to get more glorious the farther up the hill I went, only it didn't. There were patches of flowers here and there, but none of the sweeping vistas that we had seen coming down to Santa Barbara a few days ago. I figured when I got to the top, I would see what the paper promised.

Only it was a very narrow, very windy road, very slow going. And at one point, I nearly got creamed by a car speeding down the hill in the middle of the road on a blind curve. We both swerved and, as I was on the outside, with nothing to stop me from going over the side, I was pretty terrified. At this point the road started getting much more steep and so when I found an overlook that would permit me to turn around comfortably, I decided that even if there was an explosion of color awaiting me at the summit, I was too rattled to make it that far, so I turned around and headed back, stopping only to take a picture of this lovely blue bird.

I stopped in the Danish town of Solvang, that ready-made tourist trap, to pick up food for the road. Since it was nearly noon by then, I decided to stop and have lunch when I saw a restaurant that featured abelskeevers, which I've been curious to taste.

They are kind of round pancakes, served with raspberry syrup and powdered sugar, with a side of Danish sausage. Delicious, and overpriced--but then I expected as much. It was like eating at Fisherman's Wharf--you don't expect bargains!

I tried checking out another road which I had been assured had gorgeous wild flowers, but I think I must have made a wrong turn because the road only took me into the town of Atascadero. Eventually I gave up and headed back up the road we had driven on the way down. I was at the height of the day's sun and facing in the other direction and the display did not disappoint. The photos don't begin to do it justice, but might if you look at them full size on Flickr.

I stopped at Kettleman City, a collection of fast food places, to use the facilities and to call Walt to find out what was happening with his mother. All the plans we had last night had changed. They decided to move her to the Santa Barbara Convalescent Hospital, which is a skilled nursing facility. They are going to try it for a few weeks, but the thought is that she will move there permanently. I checked their web site and it looks very nice, and it has the advantage of having someone Alice Nan knows as the activities director. Maybe things will calm down for awhile now.

The rest of the trip went uneventfully, thanks to the great audio book I'm listening to ("Darkside" by Peter T. Deutermann) and the only problem I had was the torrential rain that hit just as I was coming into Sacramento.

I called Walt again when I got home. The move had been made and she was settled into the new place. She doesn't realize yet where she is or that this may be a permanent move for her. One day at a time...

I have to admit it was so nice to be home, and to see the dogs again. Polly is still at Ashley's house but will be back tomorrow.

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(I note with some amusement that my entry from one year ago today is entitled "how much are those doggies in my window?" and talks about my going to Solvang and the James Dean Memorial (which I also did today). There is obviously nothing new in my life any more!

Wildflower Alert

It seemed like such a disjointed day. We were going to leave for Santa Barbara at 10, but Walt, worried about his mother, hadn't slept much and had a lot he wanted to do before we left, so by the time we actually got on the road it was noon. I wasn't in "travel mode" and when we stopped for gas on the way out of town I realized I had forgotten to bring my camera. I never go anywhere without my camera. We had to go back to get it.

I drove the first leg of the trip, so Walt could sleep, and chose to go the I-5 route, which proved to a be a very good decision.

We stopped around 3 for lunch at Quiznos and at about the halfway point in the trip, I turned the car over to Walt. We cut across from I-5, headed to Paso Robles along the 50-something mile stretch of highway 41. This area is generally very dry and barren looking, but we've had a very wet winter and I was really enjoying the deep green on the hills.


And then as we started approaching those hills, the green suddenly became alive with color.


Mile after mile after mile of glorious carpets of color, of wildflowers growing along the side of the hills that made mountain "fingers" coming down to meet the highway. Carpets of yellow mustard and purple lupin.



And then off in the distance I saw the patchwork add a new color--a mountain covered with poppies. I told Walt we HAD to stop

.It was breathtaking and the photos don't do it justice. I imagined Dorothy and her companions coming over the ridge there on their way to Oz and encountering the field of poppies!

After we got here, I found an article in the newspaper giving a "wildflower alert," and guiding readers to where they can find even more spectacular displays (on the road to the Neverland ranch)


I'm going to try to follow the instructions on the way home, I think. The opportunity to see such a wild display of wildflowers comes along so rarely!

We didn't see Walt's mom when we got here...they reported she was "out of it," having been given morphine for pain. Instead we settled into the house, went to dinner and then had a visit with Walt's brother Norm when he came back from the hospital. Reports are sounding positive. I guess we'll find out more today.

During the evening I had lots of text exchanges with Ashley and with Jessica, who is house-sitting for us. Polly had bit her and wouldn't eat, but hid behind the curtains, trembling. Ashley decided to take her out of our house and bring her to her house, so Jessica and her toddler son wouldn't risk injury from frightened Polly. I think it will be a good experience for Polly to be in a new environment for a few days. She is so bonded with me that if she doesn't learn to tolerate other people she's never going to find a "forever home."

I had no internet connection last night, but somehow have a weak one this morning so I'm going to try to post this now--then let the birthday revels begin! The big party is this afternoon.