Sleeping Beauty's House? No, but Grandpa's blackberries. Summer 2016

Grandpa's blackberries have blockaded the house

When he was in his eighties, one evening on the beach at the cabin in Idaho, Grandpa told me the story of his life. This was a spontaneous event, I didn't have a tape recorder. And I wasn't smart enough to think of going inside afterwards and writing down everything I could remember.

But I was listening very carefully, and I remember some of it.

One of the stories he told, as a joke upon himself, was that he had planted some blackberries when he was a young man. Way down at the edge of the property, near the road. (Sold long ago). I haven't told this story locally, because I didn't want the neighbors to blame him.

These blackberries are called Himalayan. Definitely not native; they have taken over large areas of the West coast. (If they were native, there would be a natural control on them.) When I came here in 1981, they had at least 3 of the remaining 7 acres. And now they've surrounded his house. I and a friend have finally started cutting and digging them, a couple of hours a week.

So in his story, everybody told him not to plant the blackberries. And he told them he was young and strong, and he could "grub them out".

And now I'm not young and strong anymore, but I get to try to get them under control...

Summertime, and the living is easy

New sailboat, summer 1969

Summertime, and the living is easy......and the cotton is high.

It's easy to guess that the person who wrote those lyrics had never picked cotton.

Neither have I, but my first job was as summer field labor in an experimental barley field. That was in the pre-sunscreen era, and it took only one day for me to figure out that someone as pale-skinned as I needed long sleeves and a hat.
(Why  it took me that long I don't know, I always burned badly.) And summertime work out in a hot sunny field is not easy at all.


The year I was a freshman in college, the woman who graduated as  the valedictorian that year had earned her way through college picking fruit in the Wenatchee Valley. I was very impressed.


The little sailboat is from a few years later. That's me, and our dad behind the mast, and a brother. And one year an article had been published about PABA (para-amino-benzoic acid). So Dad mixed up some in alcohol, and my sister and I tried it while sailing across the lake. We were amazed that we didn't sunburn at all.

And around here, the living is not so easy in summertime.

True it's not between 42 degrees F and 52 on the main floor (I used a refrigerator thermometer to check that, since the thermometer on the non-functional thermostat only goes down to 52.) Sometimes 52 degrees is a lot colder than other times…

And not between 50 and 60 degrees on the top floor. The higher temperatures are after several sunny days, or when there's been a fire in the woodstove.

And I'm not wading through a foot of snow to carry firewood from the garage to the house and upstairs after several days of the power being out, like a couple of years ago. (Normally I try to carry firewood up between storms.)

Yes, it only takes 5 minutes to dress in one layer of clothes, but more baths/showers and more laundry.

But the main thing is that it takes half an hour to go around morning and evening closing/opening curtains and/or windows, and turning on and off fans and sprinklers. And when it's hot, it's hot.

When the living is really easy here is right now, spring and fall, in the weeks when the temperature is fine and the windows can be left open to screens all day and all night. Between rain or snow storms. Before the weather gets too hot. With fresh spring vegetables or fall harvest at the grower's market.

Except it's pollen season now, or just finished. Drifts of yellow everywhere. Can't leave the windows open to let that blow in. Can't leave them open again until I've cleaned and vacuumed window-sills, porches, low roofs. Then I will be able to see if it's really over. The recent rains might have finished it, but the pollen cones haven't fallen off the pines yet.

It's time to test the roof sprinklers again . . .

When Grandpa Hubbard had this house built in 1917, he saved $300 by doing the plumbing himself. (Three floors, plus an attic, and the roof sprinklers.) He put a hose bib in a closet on each floor, with a hose ready in case of fire. And the roof sprinklers. This is the California foothills, and fire is always possible, as we can see now. And originally the house had a shake roof, as well as sides.

This is gravity-flow water, coming down from the mountains, so it should still be available near a fire.

It has been my custom to test them each year on the first really hot day of summer. The best time is when the very last sun is on the roof, for the maximum evaporative cooling, but so the sun will be gone when I turn them off again. It has the advantage then of starting to cool the house off for the night - acting like a giant swamp cooler.

On the usual hot day, this is lovely: it smells like rain, it sounds like rain, it looks like rain, it cools things off. I open all the windows that won't splash in, and after walking around to get a view of all the sprinkler heads, I sit on the porch for a few minutes enjoying it, before turning the water off again.

But Mom called to say that the sprinklers should be tested right away, after all there are fires all over - and I had to agree with her. But it is all smoky and muggy today, and I couldn't open most of the windows. And since it is so muggy, probably the sprinklers didn't cool the house off much.

But it still smelled like rain (and smoke), and sounded like rain, and looked like rain. And I sat out on the porch and enjoyed it.


PS You can see that some sprinkler heads need replacing.

PPS The sky is not blown-out in this photo; that's the color the sky has mostly been for weeks - greyish brownish white.

The temperature of the ocean water off the Oregon coast...

50°F, 10°C. The temperature in the top floor bedroom when it has been cloudy and cold. The temperature of the main floor after a few sunny days. When it's cloudy and cold, or rainy, the main floor is in the 42°F range. I use the refrigerator thermometer to tell me what the temperature is inside on that floor, since the thermometer on the non-functional thermostat only goes down to 52°F.

When it has been warm & sunny, the top floor can be up to 60°. Passive solar.

I worked outside for over 7 years. I know how to live with this. Lots of layers, lots of blankets. I have a fleece-lined denim men's bathrobe that I call a housecoat, replacing an old wool one of my Dad's. I wear it over lined jeans and several t-shirts and a fleece vest. I sleep in layers, including a hooded sweatshirt, with mounds of blankets. When it's really cold, I add a sleeping bag to the stack on the bed. Plus heater cats, who sleep on me.

I have been trying to keep the electric bill in the $75 range this year, instead of the $300 range of previous years, a legacy from when Enron and the Bush/Halliburton regime screwed California. And still keep the house warm enough to not get moldy.

When the chimney is clean and I can use the wood-stove, it can get positively tropical - over 60°. T-shirt temp.

One of the advantages of these interior temperatures is that there are more days, like today, when it got up to 59° outside on the sunny South porches, when it is possible to have the windows and doors open to air out the house and warm it up.

One of the disadvantages is that in the morning, crawling out of that warm nest is unattractive, and the temptation to go back in with a book and cup of tea, when I wake up early, is irresistible. And then, falling back to sleep... And then running down the hill, almost late to work.


(One other trick - I warm up my clothes & pajamas on the radiator heater, for a few minutes before putting them on. Natural fibers only, not synthetics which might melt. And not with the heater turned on high. And don't leave the room and forget them.)

Vintage Light 2

This is dawn light coming through the South window in my grandfather's house. Very early dawn light, since the rest of the room is so dark. Very much in the winter, with the sun at it's furthest South, since we're seeing the window so straight on, instead of sideways like the previous picture, which was through the same window, in early November. And a very narrow focussed beam of light, coming through a very narrow gap in the tall trees, since the wavery effect of the old float glass is so clear. Each window pane has its own pattern.

I am being very busy with classes and work this semester, so I'm not getting here to post very often. But I'll keep trying.

Sunrise Light 1

This is dawn light coming through the old float glass windows of Grandfather's house. Wavery glass, I call it. Dawn light because the pattern of the light is sharpest when the room is dark, and the light is a narrow beam coming through a space between the trees. The water texture of the old glass is different in each pane.

The music to accompany taking these pictures is delicate & precise, lute or guitar music by Bach or Dowland. Suitable to accompany birdsongs, if it's warm enough to have the window cracked open. Sunrise music.

Dear Faithful Reader

(and occasional readers) I know you're out there, because of Statcounter. Perhaps you could get in touch and let me know what keeps you coming back, what you're looking for? Or why you don't come very often, what you're looking for? I write about lots of things. If I knew what interested you, perhaps there'd be more about those topics. If you'd rather email me than leave a comment, please put the blog name in the subject line.

Imagine me here at my desk writing to you. This is the day after I got my computer. It's on the Mission desk in Grandfather's house. I had been online first thing, and gotten an image of a batik fabric to use as a desktop. I call this image the "Arts and Crafts Computer". (Yes I know there's a book by that name.)

Over at Dressaday Erin tagged us all. Here's my 5 items of information about myself:

I finally met another person who dates historical events by what they were wearing. (Yes, she's a costumer.)

I live (for a few months more) in the house my mother was born in.

I learnt to sew in 5th grade in England, by hand.

I learnt to bake bread the summer I turned 16, on a wood stove at our cabin.

When I call my cats (mrrroowwwww), they come running. Through the sprinklers. To get to dinner. They have me trained to call them as soon as I come home, before dark. So the coyotes don't get them.

I love this pattern of light

This is one of my images from the Photoshop class I took last summer. It's in the upstairs living room in my grandfather's house, my lamp on the old Mission desk. The leather frame is from an old album that was Grandpa's. And I do love the way lamps like this cast patterns of light on the wall & ceiling. And that, this time, I was able to get a good image of it.

Bats in the bedroom

It seemed like an appropriate day to show this. As you can see this is the same room as the picture from Saturday. And you can probably guess that it's Photoshopped too, as was the textured image from that post.

But it's pretty real, all the same. The sunset light pattern in this image was cast by the old float glass in the window, and photographed just to the right of the sink you can see. Sunset doesn't seem like an impossible time for bats.

And all the bats were photographed on the same night last summer, standing out on the porch roof, while they were flying around the bedroom next to this.

It was 2:00 in the morning. I was in the computer room. Suddenly there was a bat swooping from the hall into the bedroom. It had come upstairs from the porch, where a screen was off. Rather than dodge through a hall full of a swooping bat, I thought I'd go out onto the porch roof to open a window to let it out. Unfortunately this brilliant idea meant that the light in the bedroom was still on when I opened the window. So by the time I got back out there with the camera, there were several bats in the bedroom, swooping into the hall and back…

How many can you see? Except for the close-up, all the pictures were taken at the same distance, near the far wall of the larger room, as you can tell by the shadows. And how many species do you think? Three at least…

This old house

My grandfather's house, built in 1917 in the Northern California foothills. My mother was born here. Arts & Crafts style simplicity: lath & plaster walls, wood floors, wood baseboards, trim and picture rails. The most flattering paint style is to extend the ceiling off-white down to the picture molding. That way the contrast shows. It's not period to have landlord-white walls. There were many layers of color on them.

There are many built-ins: china cupboard in the breakfast room, buffet in the dining room, large linen cupboard upstairs, small one down. Built-in bookcases besides the fireplaces. Porches: screened dining/living room porch, sleeping porches, entry porches, a balcony upstairs.

Many "places", individually planned & built spots with character: the top floor window seat, the schoolroom toybox/window seat and flanking bookcases. This room has a toybox/seat, and in the closet, a small door that goes back in under the eaves to a private playroom. (well, extra storage, if you're a grown-up) Under the stairs, which was the telephone closet originally, are two small doors, going back further in. It feels friendly when you walk in the door, although everybody turns the wrong way trying to go somewhere, for the first 6 months.

There's a basement apartment my grandfather made when he was 80. Shored up the foundations and poured new concrete floors. Well, he had been a mining engineer. I've lived here for 25 years, this Constitution Day.

The yukata hanging on the closet door was my sister's. We bought them during a year in Japan, my senior and her freshman year in high school. She's gone now.

The house is about to go up for sale.