Having the bathroom tiles replaced puts a certain unease in the house. First, there was the constant presence of two guys, one of whom manned a high-pitched saw much of the time. This being daylight-savings aftermath week, I can only manage to get through the day with frequent snacks. I wanted to curtail my bathroom trips, so I had to do without those plus less liquids. They made sure that at least one toilet was functioning during this project, but - what can I say? It was awkward for someone used to being totally alone.

Now, I can get to the landscaping.

Why do so many of them have soul patches?

The fellow working on the bathroom tiles today has one. I don’t want to stare, but it seemed quite intricate somehow. If I look directly at it, chances are that I will want to giggle. 

When the caps are left off the hummingbird feeder tubes, the chickadees drink the nectar. Not only that, but both hummers and chickadees eat the sugar crystals forming on the sides and bottoms of these tubes. When I’m back on my feet, I’m taking videos of this.

I hear the woodpeckers will also drink the nectar, but can’t entice the ones around here to do so. 

Yesterday, I thought I was having a horrible allergy attack. After two Claritin failed to work and a headache that got worse after aspirin, I decided some foreign thing had gotten into my system. Sleep did not come willingly, and at 4 am-ish, I realized several trucks were coming at dawn with a small army of tree pruners. The idea of a bunch of chainsaws for the entire day brought me to full alert.

When the family member woke, I asked him to call the chief pruner asap, and call it all off till next week. The trucks were already pulling up at this point, and he said he went out to talk to a guy, and it was all okay. Then he was off to work. I fell asleep at last.

A couple of minutes later, the doorbell rang. It reminded me of the years when our golden retriever would start to howl whenever I was sick at home alone. It rang again, insistently. I pulled the blankets up. Then the person opened the gate, and began pounding on the house door.

He never got the message, he said. I stood clutching my nightgown, shivering, and asked if he could come back next week. He agreed, but not happily. But I was up, and here I am, bleary, groggy, stuffy and trying to deal with a book collector, who is seriously interested in the subjects of my last buying forays. I would be thrilled if I could remember what that was like.

Sometime last fall, I hired, or thought I hired, a tree person who worked alone. He had been seen around the neighborhood giving personal attention to various kinds of trees, large and small. After he looked at my giant oaks, he agreed desperate measures had to be taken if there was to be any sun on the roses and vegetable garden ever again. Then his estimate was more reasonable than any I’d heard before, which I attributed to his working alone. He would do the back oak as well.

Then he moved to another state, assuring me that he would come back to fulfill all his jobs. Just before Christmas, I checked on his whereabouts, and once again, he said he would be here in January.

It’s January, and all my lavender plants are still waiting to go in the ground, because why plant shrubs if large tree limbs are expected to come tumbling down? I have given up on this person after the last email went unanswered.

Today, a neighbor is having work done on their trees. A quick word with the fellows out front, and I had another estimate, roughly the same as the first pruner. A look at the oak in back, and I get an estimate for both, and when I repeat the price, the man knocks off a hundred.

 Work begins Wednesday, and then I must look for a fence person. It’s going to be noisy around here.

It’s been a while. Much has happened, some good, some bad.

Right now, a small hawk is watching the finch socks. Twice, it has swooped in, but without success. Unlike the hawks discussed before, this one is very shy, and I have little hope that I’ll be able to film it. It is quite the heart-stopping moment when a hawk, no matter what size, decides to fly in less than 15 feet away.

We happened to be there, not knowing it was an historic occasion. I have nothing but regret that we didn’t find it sooner, even if it meant being on the receiving end of a tirade from the owner, back in the day. And I would have run up a tab too, had I known that was possible.

But I got to spend most of the day digging obscure books out of the stacks, wishing I had the wad of cash David Bowie did in The Man Who Fell to Earth.

There are four or five of them, doing their best to stay exotic till I get around to photographing them. Thanks to all these books waiting to be listed, I’ve had to neglect them, apparently to Sparky’s dismay.

This morning, he’s all over them, as if to exhort me to get out there, and start working.

Well, I’d love to. Part of the problem this morning has been the non-blooming one in the side yard. I decided my fern alley was as good a place to put it as any. But the ants are colonizing it, and well, this can’t be allowed to happen. This is the one I bought last year, and managed to bring to bloom in the spring. Not only is it still alive, but there is new growth, and I have great hopes that it will not die.

Meanwhile, the ants are also finding my kitchen counters to their liking. And how many spider webs did I walk into in the little time I was outside?

Maybe tomorrow, Sparky, but not if it’s going to be 90+°.

They’re stacked up 15 - 20 deep all over my desk, around it and underneath. Some days I can’t move between here and the kitchen very easily. And I went to another book fair over the weekend.

This one was outdoors in the blazing sun. No one burst out in song, there were no overly aggressive seniors fighting about the 78s selection and the staff was friendly. 

But, there was the Chinese guy who came up as I was going through the foreign section. 

CG: Hey! These books are all in Chinese!

Me (Uh, you’re looking at the Chinese books, fool.)

CG: I can’t read any of this stuff!

Me (gives him a look)

CG: Wow! All this, and I can’t read any of it! I wonder if there are any cookbooks, at least.

Me (thinks of pointing him to the cookbooks section, then realize he probably only wants Chinese cookbooks)

For once, there were at least three other people suffering from severe allergies. One woman, breathing loudly through her mouth, was flinging books down. A man nearby managed to breathe through his nose, but very badly. A 300+ lb woman lumbered by, and passed a large amount of audible gas with tremendous enthusiasm.

Some grizzled guy came up to the Old Books table, and kept staring at my sweating face, then started laughing. Surely it was at least 90°, maybe I was sweating too much for his taste.

I’ll show you a purchase or two when I can find my camera.

1.   They are highly perishable. I lost a few of the ones on the bottom to the Law of Squish.

2.   It will take longer than you might think to blanch all of them.

3.   If you have to get other work done, it is possible to hold the blanched, unpeeled tomatoes in the fridge.

4.   35 lb of tomatoes will take up an enormous amount of space in the fridge.

5.    If you start the whole process on Monday, and have procrastinated till Friday, then your Friday will be very busy.

6.    Canning tomatoes is messier than trying (and failing) to temper chocolate.

7.    Peeling these tomatoes will find and irritate mightily the tiniest cuts on your hands.

8.    Try to have all supplies and ingredients on hand so you won’t have to run out and buy, as I just did, some lemons.

 9.    If you get bored while the canned tomatoes are going through their processing, and if you’ve always been a spaghetti slurper, you can practice eating it with a fork and spoon.

Obviously I need more practice with this, seeing as my laptop now has spaghetti sauce splatters. But not to worry, I am prepared. Once it was established that today is tomato day, I also stocked up on Dove bars, the kind with the peanut butter swirl.