Staying inside today mostly due to smokey outside.

Fire season here. Lightning strikes over weekend not only knocked out power for a while, but also caused almost 4,000 fires throughout Northern CA. Sunday was pleasantly warm and windy. Monday now is smoke filled. More like an August day, than June.




Feels quiet, subdued, almost eery outside.

glad to be home tonight watching the US Open...and eating ice cream! Go Rocco!

in bay area for weekend to run trains, oh yeah, might eat some good food and sleep also...

iPhone, the day after...Now what?
At least the skunks are gone, thanks to 90000 BTU cayenne, and just about all the other mammels too.

listening to WWDC Steve Jobs Keynote

Just returned from Palo Alto where we held video conference with Seattle. Bandwidth problems forced us to use plan S....this after 40 manhours of work.

Mother Miracle Visit

Had dinner with friends of Ananda last thursday. Patrick and Shahla from Mother Miracle school in Rishikesh, India. They brought 2 little girls, Mamta and Kusuma with them. Inspiring stuff. They have over 100 little poor kids in their 2 room school. The littlest kids are outside and as they grow older they get to go inside. 3 different classes in one room. This fall, they move into a 10 room building. We are sponsoring a child, Pooja Giri, who is 10 yrs old and just learning to speak English. Her teacher for past year was Kusuma (the 14 yr old girl whom we met). Think about that.

This is inspiring work. http://www.mothermiracle.org

Rats, The Battle still rages. Spent 2 hours closing up ways Mr. Skunk can get into back yard, AND more cayenne..Mr. Skunk still ate the birdseed on the ground..sigh

Putting out cayanne pepper to discourage skunks...hope to see some trains this weekend

been trying to figure out how skunk gets into our fenced back yard. tonight there are 2 of them. double yikes!!

what is that in back yard? Skunk? Yikes!!

spring yardwork completed, 4 squirrels relocated, Leo had 5000 viewers yesterday..how much better can it get?

Zeroing in on completion of mowing. Got the blisters to prove it too.

Hummingbirds in back yard

We go through about 1 gallon of "joy juice" per day feeding these hummingbirds. This is just a snap shot from Monday morning hummer feeding. Sometimes it is a frenzy with 60-70 of them out there. We have a few steady customers over winter but mainly spring and fall when they cannot find other food around. Really a never-ending source of joy.

Recipe for "joy juice"
1 - gallon fresh cool water
4 cups white sugar
bring water to a boil. add sugar, stir to dissolve, cool before serving.

Monday in the rural foothills can be busy. Today it, yet again raining so I will catch up on inside chores while the weeds continue to grow. Hope the wildfire threat is reduced a little.

Curve ball of rain this weekend curtailed mowing. Soft and moist is nice but I am chomping at the bit to complete the fire clearing work.

Front "yard" is mowed (all one acre) and snipped. Back yard (2 acres) on Saturday. We only mow once per year when the grass is 3 feet high and dying. Don't need a tractor. Going to new Indiana Jones movie now for a treat.

Mowing season once again here, albeit earlier than past 2 years. Good news is how cool it is outside, bad news is that it might rain..

Think I will go to office today and see what trouble I can cause.