The Olive Hedge

The olive hedge on our driveway is starting to look like a hedge. Here is what it looked like from the street after the fire, if you're interested. When I start feeling overwhelmed it is helpful to go back and see what a disaster it was, and how much better it is now. Pedro cut the black branches down to the ground, told us to water the stumps well for a week or so and promised us they would come back. We've done nothing with them since except fix the irrigation drip system which melted.

Gustavo was here today and performed miracles, planting grasses on the hill, digging out more massive bamboo roots (without even disturbing Dana's dry waterfall) planting a smoke tree at the top of the driveway and hauling a pile of dead branches the  dump where it will be made into compost. This would have taken us three days (with spaces in between). It took Gustavo three hours. He even built a nice little rock retaining wall around the smoke tree. *

John is getting back on form but still wearing his hiking boots and socks in sweltering weather. He is certainly a happier camper although the ground squirrels are getting ahead of him. We have noticed that they have snipped the flowers off all the volunteer sunflowers that have come up around the property

Now that I have nobody left to make a quilt for and my skirt project is finished, I thought perhaps a nice summer sweater knitting project might make a good change from toiling in the garden.  One can clear a spider web out of a corner and come back a few hours later to find it completely rebuilt. I cannot get the rhythm of establishing the pattern on the sweater and have spent a long time ripping out the same six rows and redoing them over and over like the spider. I got so involved that I almost forgot my Pilates  class. When I came back to it I'd forgotten where I was and had to start over...again, again.

Good thing the Pilates class is still Zoom and still just at the end of the hall.... I'm not sure how long it will continue now that things are set to fully reopen on June 15th. Almost 60% of the population in Sonoma county is fully vaccinated and another 12% has had one shot. When the studio is fully occupied, there won't be room for the mat classes to resume.

It might be good to go back to a year ago March when the shutdowns began for a reminder of how far we have come in a different sort of crisis....

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