Web

The hydrangeas were enormous this year and are turning a beautiful color. I'm especially pleased because my very favorite oak leaf hydrangea burned in the fire. We thought these wouldn' t make it either, but they have come back to thrive.I decided to pick some for a winter arrangement as they dry beautifully and even keep their color. I brought them in, stuck them in a vase and forgot about them until this morning when I noticed that a resident spider had been very busy last night. they say that no matter where you are, you are never more than three feet away from an insect. I believe it.

It's' been a beautiful day. Wall to wall sunshine, warm temperatures  and a ton of leaves to rake. It seems like we just got rid of last year's batch. The  fried leaves  cling as stubbornly as ever, even after an atmospheric river and a bomb cyclone! We are going to have to get the tree people back because it has been over a year since the fire and it is pretty obvious by now which ones will need to be limbed or taken out. We keep putting it off because it is going to cost a fortune.

I spent a fruitless hour in CVS this morning. It is a huge store and I'm not familiar where things are, but I refuse to go to Walgreen's anymore. CVS wasn't much better, but the beleaguered checker seemed also to be arranging displays, unlocking the electric toothbrush case , which also contains replacement heads and practically everything else. Unlike the people in Walgreens, she was quite pleasant and when I commiserated with her for having to be everywhere at once she laughed and said, 'It's better than thirty years in middle school'. They didn't have the compression glove I was looking for in my size but after wandering around endlessly I found most of the other things on my list.

Today is Veteran's Day. I was somewhat taken aback by the fact that the city of Santa Rosa announced that downtown parking meters would not be swallowing people's quarters (six of them to park for an hour) 'In honor of Veterans' Day'. If there were any other observances scheduled for the day I was not privy to them but a parking meter moratorium seemed to be an odd way to honor those who served. I always think of my father who was a Navy veteran and wish I had asked more questions about his World War II service. My brother and I always got an edited version, but he was reluctant to say more, and we were reluctant to ask because we thought we had heard it all. It really wasn't until he was no longer here to ask that we realized how little we knew.