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Peaceful Moments

I love my mountain. Spring, summer, fall, winter, I can think of no place I would rather be. Tonight, after a hot summer day. I have all the windows and doors wide open. When I step outside, the half moon high above casts faint shadows of the trees. Low in the west is a bright star, or maybe planet. To the east of the moon is another bright beacon in space. I do not know the names of the stars and planets, but it doesn’t matter to me. They are part of my vast universe which includes the Milky Way sweeping from south to north up our driveway.

Crickets chirp. Our small pond splashes with water cascading over rocks. Frogs croak. Voices from neighbors down the road punctuate the solitude and faint music that would be too loud for me up close echoes softly from another house.

Two years of Covid have kept me in this spot most of the time, but I have met many more of my neighbors walking on the trail past the house than I have in the past. My faithful cat companion keeps me company and talks to me. All things pass, but there is some joy in the moment.

internet antenna

In Touch with the New Universe Again

Back on the internet again after two and a half days. In some ways it was a rather refreshing break and made me realize how much I rely on it. It all started during high winds at night. Being in the mountains means we rely on a rather roundabout internet connection. So when a tree across the canyon fell on a power pole in the night, it affected the relay that sends the signal to us. Fortunately our power did not go out and the weather is cool and wet enough that it couldn’t start a fire.

Antenna pointed across the valley

Looking to the next ridge for our internet signal

Later that day the power company tried to fix the line but needed a new big pole. The only way to get one to this rather remote location was by helicopter. The road in has so many curves that a truck hauling a long pole can not get there. In the afternoon I saw a huge helicopter across the canyon circle a few times, head for the side of the mountain and then swiftly leave. I did not know at the time what it was doing. I did not find out until later that it had gone in to drop the pole. Our estimated time for getting things back online was 5 p.m.

But the helicopter could not drop the pole at the exact location where it was needed. The power company had to figure out some way to transport it there. I am not sure how they did it, but the new time estimate was 11 p.m.

Dawn came and we turned on our computers. Still no connection. I called, Loren, our internet provider, again. He was once again out troubleshooting the problem. He purchases the signal for those of us in some of these rather remote mountainous areas from Comcast. It is then relayed to locations that have a direct line of sight to send the signal on to us. In this case the location was one he had secured from a homeowner who lived on the opposite ridge. The homeowner, who has solar power as well as a land line, was on vacation out of the country. For some reason when the power was restored, the solar power and the landline had not synced properly and no power was getting through to the internet transmitter.

Myth #1: One bad night drscoinc.com levitra prescription equals a problem. There seems to be a television commercial about purchasing cialis online it every two minutes. It is quite common for patients to inject insulin to maintain normal value through their bodies, especially if one takes the necessary precautions and safety measures. viagra pills from canada Considering the remedy of this specific disease, cialis viagra for women is medically proved to be an effective anti-ED capsule. Fortunately Loren had a regular door key to access the area where the transmitter is and managed to get things straightened out by evening. But we still could not bring up an internet signal so went to bed incommunicado for another night.

In the morning I contacted him again. He checked everything on his end and it seemed to be working, but he could not get a signal from our antenna. He decided he needed to come up to trouble shoot the problem.

It was a beautiful sunny day as he sat outside by our antenna checking the signal. The good news was that all seemed to be working there. So he came in to see where the problem might be on our end. In the past he has instructed me to unplug the router, wait twenty seconds, and plug it back in to let it recycle. I had done that several times during the past two days. Aha! I was the problem! I had plugged one of the cables into the wrong socket. (I thought yellow should go into yellow and blue into blue–but no!) When it was plugged in correctly, I could access the internet on my computer!

But here was the puzzle. My husband could not on his computer. More troubleshooting was called for. This one turned out to be easy. There are two cables in the router that connect each of our two computers to the internet. When he had fixed my mistake by plugging in the cables correctly,  Loren had failed to push the other cable completely into its socket. As soon as it clicked in, everything clicked in. And here I am at last able to tell you my tale.

The simple life of letters mailed with postage stamps and phone calls on party lines has passed into history. But I will take it in stride. Oh, and did I mention? Our internet provider (Loren at Hilltop Internet) lives just up the next hill over and has a vineyard and winery as well. And, most important of all, answers his own phone whenever I need to call him.

Persimmons!

I just ate my first persimmon. It was good!

Several decades ago a neighbor planted a persimmon tree close to where our two properties adjoined each other. She had just built a new house with a beautiful view of the valley below on a formerly vacant piece of land on our mountain. She planted a terraced orchard of fruit trees between our houses. But she died shortly after and never had a chance to reap the benefits of her orchard. The trees soon became obscured by brush and mountain natives.

Our current neighbor recently cleared much of the brush and revealed what was left of the orchard she planted. Some of the trees had died. Others had lived—but barely—without enough sunshine, pruning, and TLC. But the persimmon tree—the tree closest to us—still looked beautiful and by this fall was sporting lovely fruit.

Growing up in Iowa I had almost no knowledge of persimmons. I may have known that they were fruit that grew on the other side of the world, but I am not sure I even knew that. I became more familiar with the existence of persimmons when I moved to California some time ago, but only because of my contacts with the Asian community.

When these persimmons that I can see from where I am writing this started turning a beautiful crimson-orange color, my attention and appetite were whetted. One day when our neighbor was gone, I went out and pilfered (stole?) a persimmon from his tree. What should I do now? It looked ripe but was not soft. It felt a little like a ripe apple. What do you do with a persimmon? How do you eat it?
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ripe persimmon

I did what any modern septuagenarian would do. I Googled it. I found a wealth of information. The most important had to do with the two types—non-astringent (that are shaped like a tomato) and astringent (that are shaped like an acorn). It was clear that I was dealing with an astringent persimmon. I was cautioned not to eat it until it was soft if I wanted to avoid mouth-puckering acidic reactions.

The persimmon sat on the counter for over a week. Little by little it softened, but I was still fearful. Today I took the plunge. I cut the persimmon in half and put it on the plates for us to enjoy (I hoped) with our champagne brunch. I warned my husband—who also had never eaten a persimmon—about it. I told him that I read that you should scoop it out of its skin with a spoon. But while I was gingerly scooping out the pulp, he picked his half up and ate it skin and all. So, I picked up the skin and ate it too. The whole thing was delicious!

I just went out and picked another one to put on the counter to ripen. Our neighbor may need to put a fence around his tree to keep me from sneaking over in the dark of night and pilfering persimmons.

Me Too

It may be time to tell my story too.

I grew up in a time (many decades ago) where your private life was kept private—even to your parents.

Looking back on my life many years later, I still can remember two incidents vividly.

The first happened in the sixth grade. I was in Glenda Greutzmacher’s class at Perkins Elementary School in Des Moines, Iowa. I had just started learning to play the flute. Once a week I was dismissed from class for a half hour to take a flute lesson at the school. The individual classes were held in a small room half a flight above the second floor. My flute teacher, a local man, came in weekly for the lesson. The thing I most vividly remember about these lessons was that he would repeatedly stroke my upper leg. I thought this was odd but never mentioned it. Nothing further happened.
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Then when I was around 25 or 26 and newly married another incident happened. My former husband and I had just moved to a new city. One of his friends, who I knew too, already lived there. We went to visit him and have him show us around one weekend. After an evening on the town, and there had been a little drinking involved although I did not do much, we returned to his two-bedroom apartment on a Saturday night. My husband decided to call it a night and went to bed. I remained in the living room talking to our friend when suddenly I was assaulted. He leaped on me and tried to pull off my clothes. I fought and could not believe this was happening. I managed to escape to our bedroom.

These were the kinds of events that I grew up knowing I should never mention because, somehow, I would be the one who would be seen as being at fault (for being female, I guess).

Because of this I have never told anyone about these except very recently, my husband. But now, more than fifty years later, it is time.

mountain lion drinking at the pond

The Things We Treasure

Today’s Prompt: Tell us the story of your most-prized possession. Three years ago I followed some prompts on topics to post. Obviously I have skipped quite a few days (years).  But I have just discovered this one that never was posted. It is still as valid today as it was then.

A pond? How can a pond be a prized possession? I would have asked this question too–up until when I thought about this assignment. I realized that our pond is a prize I would not want to part with.

Many years ago, probably thirty or more, we opted for a small pond as part of a patio project after we had enlarged our small house by about 400 square feet and added the patio. The original design called for a fenced garden to keep the deer from devouring everything. It included a pond. We decreased the fenced area but wanted the pond and the patio outside of the fence. What a good idea!

In the many years we have had the pond we have had many visitors. Deer, of course, and coyotes and foxes, and bobcats. Neighbors, out for a walk on the trail beyond our house, have had their dogs take a dip in the pond. Quail come down in abundance in the spring, sometimes as a group with one or two males acting as lookouts and females shepherding a brood of a dozen or two fluff balls not bigger than and egg they hatched from. Mom and the chicks take a drink and then disappear into the chaparral where they are safe. The dads then can desert their watch and run back to have a drink too.

And the other birds–large, small, and in-between. In the spring, robins. Then wrentits, towhees, flickers, jays, mourning doves. And when the elderberries ripen, the band-tailed pigeons. Occasionally at night there are the owls, usually a pair hooting at each other in different keys in the darkness. When the blueberries are ripe, the thrashers appear. We share our blueberries with them. They usually get there just before I do as the blueberries ripen.

I do not know if snakes drink water from a pond, but occasionally we have had a snake or two. They are not interested in having me around and usually disappear if we cross paths. Generally if I encounter a snake it is a harmless (and beautiful) king snake or gopher snake. A couple of times I have seen a rattler who disappears rapidly. And once one was sleeping and I was able to capture it and release it into more hospitable territory up the fire trail.

In the early spring the tree frogs get excited and fill the night with their love songs. I know soon we can expect shimmering clusters of eggs in the pond. In a week or two there are hundreds of small tadpoles swimming through the water. Eventually they start developing legs, first at the back and then at the front. And then they disappear. These are small frogs, only about an inch long. Occasionally I will see one hopping about the garden, but I know they are there when the next spring comes and their chorus starts again.

And then there are the bees. A few years ago our closest neighbor began keeping bees. She was once a chef in a fine restaurant in Saratoga, grows a wonderful garden from which we often get great produce, and now keeps bees and makes honey. We have rosemary that her bees feast on and they frequent our pond. These are native bees and are no problem. All they want from the pond is a drink. I can stand out there with hundreds of them buzzing around, and I have never been stung.

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Twice in more than forty years I have actually seen a mountain lion, although I knew they might exist in these mountains. I first saw one on a hike up the fire trail just beyond our house quite a few years ago. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon as I crested a hill. At the base of the hill was a lion sitting in the sun. I decided to let the cougar have its time on the mountain and turned around and went home. I now do my hiking between 10 in the morning and 4 in the afternoon and leave the rest of the time to the pumas.

My other siting was late at night while driving home. A puma crossed the road in front of me just as I approached the house. I also once found one’s big track in the mud on the driveway.

So how very exciting to capture on camera a big cat from the mountain taking a drink from the pond in the middle of the night. We do not often get visits from such magnificent guests, who have a range of about 500 miles. I recently heard it estimated from the Santa Cruz Puma Project that there may be about 70 cat in the Santa Cruz Mountains from San Francisco to Gilroy, (around 2500 square miles).

Why do I value the pond? You decide.

 

 

 

Mt. Umunhum

Gorgeous day. So I decided to drive to Mt. Umunhum, which has only been open to the public since last September. Mt. Umunhum is a signature site in the South Bay. For 10,000 years this mountain was treasured by native Americans. It was mined in the 1800s and became an Air Force Station in 1957 monitoring the Bay Areas during the Cold War. The signature tower is the only remanent that remains from this period. It can be seen from all over the South Bay.

In the 1990s, when I was at YSI (the Youth Science Institute) I was taken up to this site, which was not open to the public, by a County Parks Supervisor. At that time there were a number of buildings that had been abandoned by the military. She was hoping we could open a YSI site in one of them. But since it was more that a half hour drive up a winding mountains road, it did not see like a site that most people would be willing to access. It was a nice idea.

Some of these complications found to buy generic cialis be intricate to treat. One viagra pill cost way they do it is by bundling it with legitimate software programs that you install on your machine. But do you know how the herb got its name? Also known as Epimedium, it was traditionally found in China, where a goat tadalafil cheapest online herder accidently consumed it and realized the libido benefits. If the problem is not that serious and has occurred generic tadalafil cipla only because of anxiety, stress, or fear it can be treated through interaction and proper counselling. The mountain towers above the Bay Area at 3486 feet (a thousand feet above where we live at the top of another mountain). It has a 360 degree view of all the surrounding area including all of Silicon Valley, the coast and parts north and  south. And someday it may be part of the Bay Area Ridge Trail that is slowly taking place that may offer a trail that rivals the Appalachian Trail.

Even as a mountain woman, this site takes my breath away.