Kenwood Oaks

Ozzie got busted by the vet yesterday. 88 pounds is too much even for a "large boned" dog. He is supposed to lose 8 pounds. On the way to Kenwood Reserve we all discussed it and vowed to eat better. I'm not sure Ozzie was on board with the program, but he was listening carefully since he was in the back seat of Oilman's car with his nose resting on the console between us. This is because we rolled the back windows in my venerable Beemer (we call it the Ozziemobile) down for him yesterday, and the left one now refuses to roll back up. Our guy at Hammond Autowerks says "…it's probably a regulator…." He's ordering a new one.

There's a lake in the Kenwood Preserve, much favored by Ozzie. Today the water was so low that 15 extra feet of shoreline cracked clay was revealed. What water there there was did not look inviting. Even the ducks eschewed the shore for the center of the lake. A dock rose on stilt legs high and dry a good 20 feet above the surface of the lake. The colored drought map in the newspaper this morning showed the entire state to be at some level of drought ranging from severe (peach colored) in the southeast corner, through extreme (cadmium red) around the north and eastern edges to exceptional (aliz crimson hue) everywhere else.

Our huge front lawn is dead, as is almost everyone else's. I would love to have something other than grass out there, but it's out of the question for a lot of reasons. When Ozzie was a puppy, we didn't have a lawn, but we did walk past a lush green one every morning. Often, it had just been watered, making it an even more attractive place to lie down and roll. He was pretty happy about the vast expanse of green in front of this house, but it is rapidly losing its appeal. The last 18 months have been the driest in California records.

Our house is not in a local fire district, so we are assessed an extra $100 fire prevention fee to the state firefighters known as CalFire. Money well spent, since we are surrounded on all sides by tinder dry grass and trees.