Silly Cow

A gift from Tim and family, this cow used to stand on top of the soil in this planter box outside our kitchen, but she seems to have subsided into a bed of oregano. She struck me as being pretty silly with oregano up to her ears  as she peered over the wall at a single fallen leaf. She's also gotten quite rusty over the years, but I think the rusty patina suits her.

By the time we mobilized for a walk this morning it was already too hot to go on a long walk but we took Spike down to the bridge where we met up with a neighbor who apologized for the noisy sawing and even noisier chipping going on down by the creek behind her house. It seems that PG&E hired a tree company to cut down trees along the creek but when Cindy, another neighbor, got wind of the fact that their plan was to shove the cut branches into the creek. I can only imagine her reaction. It was the huge logjam in the creek that threatened to flood her house last year. They couldn't get anybody to take responsibility for clearing it and had to pay $10,000 themselves to get it cleared. The woman on the other side of the creek wouldn't let the tree cutters to come onto her side to expedite clearing the logjam, so the money only covered clearing half the pile.

You'd better believe that Cindy wasn't about to let them drop more wood back into the creek, so somehow she got them to chip all the wood. She is a force to be reckoned with but so is PG&E. They have been cutting trees all over town and their policy is to just drop the branches and leave them there for somebody else to clean up. All this in the name of showing how sincere they are about mending their decades long record of neglected maintenance. 

I think they have a little more work to do. I plan to find out what Cindy did to prevent them from throwing all that wood into the creek. She deserves a medal.

This is supposed to be the last day of 90+ temperatures and then perhaps we'll begin to move into something that feels a bit more like autumn.

The pictures in extras are of Maya, Owen, and their cousin Ethan, who flew out from Vermont for a visit. Owen was a baby when the top picture was taken so the bottom was recreated a few days ago shows them in the same pose (with the same props) 15 years later. They are hoping to go on a tour of Alcatraz with a bonus viewing of the Pacific fleet and a Blue Angels flyover celebrating Fleet Week.